But he didn’t start playing games in the NFL the day after he finished his college career. I’d bet he spent a Spring and Summer getting stronger and learning what it took to be a successful professional player. All evidence points to Manziel not doing any of that work.
It’s a problem that sometimes young players in any sport who are well in advance of their peers don’t realize that they might be ahead early-on but most of the hard work is still to be done.
Take Freddy Adu, Ghanian-born American soccer player who at age 14 was lauded as the “next Pele” and whom Pele himself predicted great things for - now at age 25 he currently has no club (some achievement when you think there are several thousand professional soccer clubs in the World) and may not be able to find another club having a rather dismal track record. Now in reality Adu was overhyped (Pele himself has such a dismal track record of having predictions come true that often his predictions are seen as the kiss of death) and was never quite a big a talent as some supposed, but at least should’ve been able to make a living in a top league like the Premiership or La Liga. The big problem with Adu is that after “hitting the big time” age 14, the indications are that he never felt he had to work hard, his attitude never matured and he seemed to be more dedicated to preserving his mythos and milking it for money than turning into a professional soccer player which was of actual use to the teams he played for.
The problem is that real confidence is knowing your own capabilities and under-confience is underestimating them and over-confidence is over-estimating them. Anyone who thinks they can succeed at a high level in competition with talented people working hard without working hard themselves, no matter how talented they may be, is over-estimating their own capabilities.
They are rare, but never say never. I dimly recall Bum Phillips saying Earl Campbell was the only player he’d ever known who was ready for the pros while still in college.
And that’s while playing in Cleveland. Can you imagine how badly he might have played if he had been in New York?
I wonder how close Adrian Peterson was to playing in the pros when he was leaving Palestine High School? Not that it was allowed of course, but he’s the closest I’ve seen that could have pulled it off.
The “nightlife” aspect is overblown.
There have been many, many stellar athletes who embodied the “work hard, play harder” ethic. Nobody loved booze, coke and sex more than Michael Irvin, but nobody in NFL history practiced harder.
Some great quarterbacks have been milk-drinking, born-again Christians (like Kurt Warner), but others have been beer drinkers and hell raisers. It doesn’t bother me in the least that Johnny Manziel likes to drink, party and chase women. Hell, he’s young, single and rich! He’s entitled. But if he doesn’t spend time in the film room, if he doesn’t know the playbook inside and out, if he doesn’t put in extra practice time with his receivers BEFORE going out to party, then THAT’S a problem.
Worth noting: even before the draft, I saw SOME pro scouts raising a much more important red flag about Manziel. They played tapes showing that at Texas A & M, Manziel often took off running without ever looking to his secondary (much less tertiary) receiver. That is, there were many plays where he’d run for 8 yards (yay Johnny!) but COULD have thrown for 25 or 30 if he’d looked to his secondary receiver!
Manziel’s instincts have always been, “Look for receiver #1, and if he isn’t wide open, take off running.”
"Four days later, stories in the Browns’ facility began to circulate. Manziel was not present the morning before the season finale. Team security drove to Manziel’s downtown home to check on him. The Browns were packing up for the season finale at Baltimore on Dec. 28.
Two team sources said security found a player who they felt clearly had partied hard the night before. One source used the words “drunk off his a–.”
The official word was that Manziel was “late,” but players said they didn’t see Manziel until the Browns’ chartered airplane prepared to take off in the afternoon, that he was not present all morning. The team fined Manziel for missing treatment on his injured hamstring, then had him sit in the locker room during the season finale in Baltimore."
When the partying effects your practice and ability to lead your team, then I don’t think it’s “overblown”.
Again, though, I think you’re simplifying what is actually a very complex issue.
astorian is absolutely right; Manziel’s propensity for partying isn’t itself a problem. I assure you that ALL young athletes party hearty; boozefests, chicks and partying until 3 AM is absolutely standard practice in every major pro sport and anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. The difference between Gretzky/Jeter/LeBron and the likes of Johnny Manziel is simply that they can find time to party and still hit the gym. The morning after a lights-out party, MAgic Johnson dragged his ass out of bed, much as he might not have wanted to, and was doing cardio an hour before any of his teammates showed up. Manziel lacks that ability. They organize their lives better, or they’re smarter, or they’re more driven, or they just like their sports more, or a wide combination of things.
“Dude parties too much” is just a simple explanation people trot out which serves to simplify a much more difficult problem to unravel; why are some people highly motivated and some not? Why do some people just not work as hard as others? Hell, I’ve always wondered this about myself; you can get 40 hours a week out of me, maybe 50 if I’m really into the project, but I just will not be a superworker and so I’m not high on the corporate ladder. Why is that? Why am I not like the president of my company? And why are some people even less motivated than me, and so can’t get jobs as good as mine at all?
Sports gives us the opportunity to see the effects of what I’ll call “laziness” right up close. It it remarkably and immediately obvious that Johnny Manziel was lazy this past year, while, say, Russell Wilson was not lazy at all in his first year. Manziel is just as physically gifted as Wilson, so why did Wilson throw 26 TDs in his first season and Manziel threw for none? Why did Wilson win a Super Bowl his second season, while Manziel will be watching the Super Bowl at a Wild Wing after his second season? The easy answer is than Manziel is lazy, but what’s “lazy”? Is he overconfident? Or is his confidence just bravado, and actually he doesn’t believe in himself at all? Is he stupid? Does he have a substance abuse problem? Are there psychological factors at play?
My understanding is that pro sports leagues make players take psychological tests, which help weed out the ones who are just freaking crazy or psychopathic, but anyone who’s taken a lame corporate test knows those things are pretty crude. (One of the MLB questions is “if you were an animal, would you be a cat or a dog?”) What precisely is wrong with Manziel is very hard to say, and I’ll propose something controversial; I don’t think it is yet proven Manziel cannot succeed in the NFL. I would bet against it, but sometimes people DO turn it around. Sometimes a good slap in the face with the reality bat can change folks, especially if it catches them early.
Postscript- by most accounts, Marcus Mariota is a fine, upstanding young man, a good citizen and an intelligent guy. Even so, some scouts and NFL observers see the same problematic tendencies in Mariota. Mariota probably has the size, the arm and the smarts to be a good NFL quarterback, BUT… in high school and college, he typically looked for his primary receiver, and either threw to that guy if he was open or took off running if he wasn’t.
In high school and college, that WORKED! It worked extremely well (as it did for Manziel, RG3 and many others). But in the NFL, a quarterback is supposed to stay focused on the pass, to stay in the pocket and go through his progressions. He’s supposed to look for his #2 receiver and his #3 receiver, or for a dump outlet.
CAN Mariota do that? Sure- but it will go completely against every instinct he’s honed over all his years playing football. It’s HARD to unlearn your instincts when years of conditioning and experience have taught you that following your gut works.
Oh, I completely agree. IF your partying means that you miss practices, show up late for practices, don’t spend time in the film room, etc., that’s a HUGE problem.
But as I noted earlier, Michael Irvin and MANY other members of the Cowboys’ mini-dynasty of the Nineties spent their nights at the notorious “White House” snorting coke and naiing strippers. I don’t recommend that kind of lifestyle for anyone, but you know what? After a night of drugs and orgies, Irvin always dragged himself out of bed, practiced hard, and stayed late to run extra routes and catch dozens of extra balls from Troy Aikman.
I may consider Irvin’s lifestyle immoral or dangerous, but as long as he showed up for work on time (or early) and did his job at a high level, what did coaches or fans care where he spent his nights?
In the same way, nobody would care about Johnny Manziel’s partying IF he were working hard and studying hard. SOME champion athletes have even become icons of cool for their partying and nightlife- Joe Namath and Paul Hornung and Walt Frazier did. Derek Jeter slept with supermodels, and was LOVED by most fans (except those who, understandably, got sick hearing about him)
Get the job done on the field or court or ice, and then you can party all you want.
Of course. I didn’s say the partying was the ONLY thing causing Manziel’s problems. But when the partying effects your ability to work hard, then it is part of the problem. It isn’t just the partying, but the partying combined with the lack of a solid work ethic and massive ego, that is threatening to derail Manziel’s career. I don’t think you can call it overblown when it contributes to the problems he’s having.
Not that everything is always all about the Patriots, but I can’t help adding three words to this post:
**YO SOY FIESTA! **
Talking points on JM:
1 - His biggest contribution to the Browns organization may simply have been showing up. Whether he does something on the field or off, he will bring much-needed publicty to the organization. As they say, bad PR is better than no PR. And who was talking about the Browns before he showed up? (crickets)
2 - He has oodles of character flaws, some kind of cute, but most of them do not bode well for him or his place with this team. Unless he suddenly matures overnight and develops a crazy good work ethic, he’s Joe Namath without the ball skills and without the Super Bowl ring. All celebrity flash, but when you ring that doorbell, nobody’s home.
3 - He needs to make his teammates like him and pull for him. He’s not going to win friends and influence people by pushing the limits of the rules and making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
4 - He’s young, naive, and cash rich and thus a target for every leech and sychophant out there. If a guy in his position starts owing too much (not just cash, but time and favors, etc.) to the wrong guys he could be in serious trouble. I don’t think he’s terribly intelligent.
5 - If he can pull his head out of his nether regions and start taking his job seriously, he does have the potential to be something really special. And God knows Cleveland needs a hero. They still idolize Bernie Kosar, all these years later. Imagine what the rest of Johnny M’s life would be like there if he could bring the Browns to the championship.
6 - Kid still has the best QB nickname ever. He’s nicknamed after the whole effing sport, for God’s sake.
I think he’s beyond the point of no return on this one. Browns veterans do not like him and they never will unless he wins a crap load of football games.
So now he enters ‘rehab’ I’ll assume he’s going to some celebrity facility by the beach where he’ll listen to a bunch of useless New age woo and come back to the Browns as a ‘changed man.’
But Joe Namath, despite the party boy reputation, showed up to practices, worked hard, and was, by all accounts, an excellent teammate. Despite the off the field persona, he reportedly had a tremendous work ethic (playing into his family’s steelworker background).
My opinion of him has gone downhill even from what it was before. I think he is simply only interested in being good at something if it comes easy. He strikes me more and more as the guy who was born with everything and doesn’t know anything but fun. Well everything except personal drive. And NFL level throwing ability. And self-control.
I think you may have nailed it in post #4 in this zombie. I’ll call you Sportsradamas. 
He won’t even stay long enough to get his bi-weekly hair washing!