10 Years Ago At The NFL Draft, Johnny Manziel Was Supposed to Save The Browns - Let's Look Back
It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years since the 2014 NFL Draft when the Cleveland Browns and owner Jimmy Haslam pulled the trigger and drafted Johnny Manziel which triggered one of the wildest periods in NFL history.
After all was said and done, Manziel's NFL career ended with two wins, six losses, seven touchdown passes, 19 sacks and a life that will have future generations asking their fathers and grandfathers if they were around when Johnny Football was ruling the content world.
What a run it was from 2014-15 in Cleveland for Johnny, who ended it all with a trip to Vegas when he was supposed to be meeting with Browns team doctors. Instead, he hopped on a flight to Vegas where he partied in disguise, but a Vegas media guy ratted him out and the team cut him later that week.
In 2018, Manziel shared the story of how the wig and mustache happened:
"I missed my flight, I put out an Instagram saying that I'm at home with my dog, and tagged it in Avon, Ohio. So then I'm like, I'm not going to be able to just go in with a hat. Let's go get a wig. And, as funny as this is, I'm still pretty embarrassed by it. It's still like a reckless decision, but like we said, let it die. I'm like, 'Let's go to this wig shop.' So I type in Google, nearest wig shop and just go somewhere off the strip. Very very sketchy, I walk into this place and this little lady walks up [and asks], 'What you want on your hair?' And I'm like, 'I need something that makes me not look like this. Do you have a mustache, do you have a wig, do you have anything?' And she came back with this wig and I put it on, and I'm like, 'Perfect!' I shaved off all my facial hair except my mustache."
After a night of partying, Manziel said at 3 or 4 AM PST, he just turned off his phone fully knowing he was supposed to be at the Browns facility that morning at 8 ET.
He eventually returned to Cleveland, but that was the end of Manziel in the NFL.
While that was the end of Manziel in Cleveland, Browns Hall of Famer Joe Thomas shared a story in 2023 detailing how Manziel's career in Cleveland was a disaster from the minute the team selected the quarterback.
"Well, shortly after we drafted him, he vanished in the spring. We were in the middle of OTAs and the coaches couldn't find him," Thomas explained. He'd come to Cleveland. He was there for like a day, he was at practice and then he just disappeared. And, I think he was just on a bender somewhere in Cleveland partying and he couldn't find his way back to the facility. It was at that moment I was like, 'We may have some problems with this young rookie here if he can't even find his way during OTAs when he's a rookie and he should be trying to put his best foot forward.'"
In the 2023 Netflix documentary Untold: Johnny Football, Manziel admitted to being a guy the Browns shouldn't have drafted. "Zero," Manziel told the filmmakers when asked how much film he watched on the Browns' team-issued iPad.
"Their GM's calling me, saying, ‘He doesn’t watch tape," Erik Burkhardt, Manziel's agent, says in the documentary. "I'm like, ‘Well, he’s gotta watch some tape.' He's like, ‘EB, his iPad hours is at 0.00.’"
The lesson here as we prepare for the 2024 NFL Draft is that your team might select a bust at quarterback, but there's a high likelihood the guy won't be nearly the bust that Johnny Manziel was a decade ago.
#NeverForget
Do you have a Johnny Manziel memory? Were you there when Johnny was tearing up Vegas in disguise? Tell your stories.
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com