Johnny Manziel‘s 9 Lives with the Cleveland Browns Continues On
How do the boneheads of the NFL stay employed? Why is bad behavior overlooked by management? Just ask Johnny Manziel, who is now back to QB1 status.
I’m sure J-Football has learned his lesson Mike Pettine.
Cleveland’s coach moved Manziel to third sting hell after the second year QB appeared in a video online showing him drinking it up at a party. The Browns went back to Josh McCown who ended up hurt so they had to let Austin Davis start in week 13 against the Bengals.
Davis was ineffective of course, so Johnny Manziel is back! That exclamation point should be a simple “period.” Nobody with a lick of football sense thinks Manziel would have fared much better against Cincinnati. The Browns gained just 68 yards rushing in Sunday’s game, and the defense barely slowed Dalton and company down.
The Browns are not a good football team and they are grasping at straws. Manziel is just another straw.
The fact that he is getting another shot at starting is just a lesson in the reality of pro football. You can act like an idiot and keep your job, maybe even start. That is, as long as your team needs you.
Manziel has not impressed anyone, yet his team has no options. McCown is out for the year. Austin Davis clearly doesn’t have the confidence of ownership or else they would just let the kid play out the rest of the year so Johnny Football could learn his lesson.
Mike Pettine may be a hard ass who would like to keep Manziel grounded from his Xbox the rest of the year, but the head coach has a boss too.
Think this emboldens Manziel? You bet your ass. He can have a domestic dispute with his girl, act like a drunken fool on video for the world to see, and be mediocre on the field, yet still be trusted to run the Browns offense.
They have no choice. It’s just the reality of pro sports.
The history of sports is littered with bad guys getting chance after chance to earn big money while getting cheered for their efforts on the field of play. Johnny Manziel hasn’t killed anyone like Leonard Little, but he sure hasn’t conducted himself like a professional. His conduct has been unbecoming of an NFL quarterback especially.
Manziel is just another example of the unbalanced scales of on and off the field issues. A player’s on the field value will almost always outweigh what they do off the field. If Manziel was a backup on the Patriots’ team, he would have been cut this year. Not because Belichick and Robert Kraft have a higher moral standard than the Browns’ management. J-Football would be gone because he wasn’t needed. Tom Brady is the solid starter so Manziel would be expendable. Same situation if Manziel was with Green Bay, Cincinnati, and Carolina.
The only reason Manziel still has a roster spot is because he is on an awful team with average quarterbacks around him, one of which is injured. He is able to act a fool, and keep his job. And now gets to be the starter once again.
Manziel should seize this opportunity. Not to be the best he can be on the field, but to take his partying to the next level. He should go out and party however he wants.
Do it nightly if he feels like it. Maybe even rent a party bus for the next road game in San Francisco. What’s Mike Pettine gonna do? The head coach’s punishment has no teeth.
The Browns need little Johnny on the field. That may change next year if the Browns can get lucky in the draft, but for now Manziel has the leverage.
If you’re wondering why Manziel has gotten away with his actions all this time, likely since high school, it should be obvious. The guy has just done what he was allowed to get away with. As long as he was valuable on the football field he could afford to go off the rails a bit in the real world.
His value is diminishing fast in the NFL though and he’s going to have plenty of time to party as soon as the Browns have a better option at quarterback.
For now though, Manziel is back to QB1. No lesson learned from his grounding. It’s not like he did some community service over the past couple weeks to atone for his public screw-up.
He just sat back and waited for Cleveland to be in need of his services once again.