This is really disappointing. I wanted him to be great and give the league 15 years of disciplinary headaches. Alas, too much to want, I suppose.
I didn’t see this before but USCDiver already made the point I would have made. The players who look like they succeeded immediately in the NFL are players who spent a couple thousand hours in training before their first appearance in an NFL game.
Some players think they can just jump from the top of the college football pyramid to the top of the professional football pyramid. But it doesn’t happen that way. You generally jump from the top of the college pyramid to the bottom of the NFL one.
The players that look great during their rookie years also benefit from some selective memories, In Wilson’s first four games, he lost to the 5-11 Cardinals and the 7-8-1 Rams. He went 60/100 for 594 with 4 TDs, 4 INTs, and 1 fumble lost. It’s not like he was scrambling all over the place, either - in those games, he had 22 carries for 80 yards and no scores. According to this calculator, that comes out to a QB rating 73.5.
Wilson really put it together during the rest of the year, throwing just 6 more picks in the remaining 12 games and drastically improving his yards per attempt and yards per completion. We remember the end of the season better than the beginning. We remember that Seattle went 11-5 and Wilson went to the Pro Bowl as a rookie and that he was a pro-bowl quarterback as a rookie. We remember that he had a good wild card game against Washington and a great game in the divisional loss to Atlanta… and we forget what happened earlier that season. At the beginning of his rookie year, Wilson was a serviceable QB, especially for a rookie… but he definitely wasn’t a “first-rate QB the moment he started.”
He undersized and doesn’t have the chops to be a full time NFL player. Add to that a poor attitude and off the field lifestyle habits, and Im sorry I just don’t see him lasting very long in the NFL. I wish the guy well and hope rehab helps him and he is sincere about trying to change, buts its too many strikes against him too early on, Im sorry to say.
Well, once again, the Browns are going to be looking for a new QB.
Hoyer is a free agent, and he wasn’t doing a great job in the first place, or Manziel wouldn’t have gotten a chance to start.
The only other free agent quarterback I know is available would be Mark Sanchez.
The Browns won’t be drafting high enough to get Marcus Mariota or Jameis Winston, and there are plenty of question marks about both of those guys. I don’t know of any other promising QBs who’ll be in the draft this May.
When Mark Sanchez looks like your best option, you’ve got big problems!
Connor Shaw to the rescue! Just need to trade for Alshon Jeffery. Go Cocks!
A note, I went to one of those ‘celebrity facility by the beach where he’ll listen to a bunch of useless New age woo’ rehabs, except it was in Arizona, not by the beach. While I was there I did sessions with a billionaire fashion designer, the daughter of a famous actor and the C.I.O. of a huge tech company among others.
The interesting thing was that the staff didn’t give a shit that Mr Fashion was a billionaire*, or that the ladies father was one of the big actors of the 1970’s and 80s. The staff worked the problem.
If Manziel takes it seriously, he has a good shot at getting his shit together. The rehabs tend to be very intense and focused on getting to the root(s) of the problems. Quite frankly, the time I spent in rehab was the hardest thing I’ve done. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t pleasant and it certainly wasn’t New Age Woo.
I certainly hope Manziel gets it together, not because I am a Browns fan but because living in addiction is a horrid nightmare. Addiction will drag you down, stomp on you and kill you.
I don’t know much about Manziel, but if he really did decide by himself that he needed rehab (as opposed to being pressured into going) I give him decent odds of getting it together, say 50%. I am optimistic that way.
I wish the guy luck.
Slee
- I just checked, and technically Mr Fashion Designer isn’t a billionaire. A hundred million or so shy. But still absolutely loaded.
Updating this thread:
So what team will he probably move to?
My coworker thinks Johnny might have some trade value. Sashi Brown seems to disagree or else he would presumably not make any negative comment. If I thought I could get a 7th round pick for Johnny, I’d take it. If not, cut him.
I was disappointed that I didn’t respond to this thread back when it was new, although I’m sure I’m on record somewhere stating that I hated the Manziel pick for the Browns.
Didn’t Manziel already go to rehab once before?
I’m not a Manziel fan, although I am an Aggie.
That said, I think that the NFL top brass couldn’t have dreamed up a worse way to set Manziel up for failure than for him to end up on the Cleveland Browns.
The Browns organization is a hot mess, and I can’t help but think that to some degree, Manziel was a lightning rod for a lot of anger about the organization’s chaos and dysfunction. I also kind of had the impression that Pettine more or less had it out for Manziel from the start; was he drafted without Pettine’s approval? It also seemed like Pettine was more concerned with exerting control over Manziel than actually letting him play/do his own thing.
I always felt that had Manziel landed somewhere with a more stable, less fucked-up organization and culture, and he’d have done much better, as the team organization would have added structure and not been a three-ring circus in its own right.
Manziel is an adult and has no one to blame for being a fuckup other than himself.
You know who is responsible for Manziel’s performance in the NFL? Johnny Manziel. It wouldn’t have mattered if he went to Cleveland, San Diego, or even the Patriots, he simply couldn’t cut it mentally. He’s immature, unwilling to work at his craft, over-reliant on his physical skills, and may not have the brain to play NFL QB. Blaming the Browns, or Pettine, or anyone else for how Manziel has turned out is like saying the Colts made Peyton Manning great. This mess is all on Manziel.
No respected coach is going to let Manziel do his thing. Manziel’s thing doesn’t work in the NFL. He can’t run past/through defenders like he could in college, he doesn’t have a WR with an amazing catch radius to bail him out, and he’d take a brutal pounding if they ran the simplified offense Manziel knows how to play.
I completely disagree. Manziel is a head case, and he’s his own worse enemy. Until he gets his head right, it’s not going to matter if it’s in Cleveland or Bora Bora, he’s going to be a bust.
Geez… are you guys angry Browns fans or something?
All I was pointing out is that the Browns seems like a terrible place to work as a professional football player or staffer, and that had Manziel landed somewhere else, he might have been more successful.
I don’t ever recall Joe Thomas going to frat parties or fighting any girlfriends.
Eh, I could easily argue that Cleveland was actually a good destination for Johnny. Low expectations and not as much opportunity to get into trouble as, say, Miami or New York.
Organizationally, yes, the Browns suck. But if Johnny’s play had been what it was without the off-field crap, they’d stick with him.
If the football gods have a sense of humor he’ll end up in Buffalo with the Ryan brothers. What a train wreck that would be but likely highly entertaining.
What did we ever do to you?
While it is indisputably the case the Browns have put some bad football teams on the field, there’s no way you can know what it’s like to work for them. A professional sports team can be a perfectly good employer and still finish in last place.
You hired the Ryan brothers! You’re not going to get any better under Ryan so you might as well be entertaining.
(I say that while noting that Rex is perhaps the best defensive coach in the league, easily on par with Belichick. He just a lousy head coach.)