Mr. Pachucki – Here’s Johnny!

Here’s Johnny

I can’t say enough about how fascinated I am about Johnny Manziel. To be honest, my opinion has really changed, and it’s hard to say at this point who the Cleveland Browns starter will be in Week 1. When asked a month ago about whether Manziel would be starting, who could say anything but no, since the Browns initiated the negotiations with Brian Hoyer, the anticipated starter who is entering the last year of his contract. He’s only 28-years-old, too (Aaron Rodgers is 30).

Now that this deal with Hoyer isn’t done, maybe the Browns might be more excited about Manziel than originally thought. Following all the hype, in last week’s game, Johnny Football misses a wide open fullback just so he can scramble for a first down on his own…a play so awful it smacked of “me” instead of “us” going out there to win the game.

Mike Pettine seems to be a Hoyer-backer, but it’s hard not to succumb to so much public pressure, and ticket sales. 2300 season tickets sold within the twenty-four hours of the draft pick, and the #2 Browns jersey is #1 in the NFL this year.

So…how did Manziel become such a media phenom? Here are a couple guesses, and feel free to add or subtract from this list:

• He’s a Heismann Trophy winner
• He texts the QB Coach on draft day saying how he wants to “…wreck this league…”
• He hangs out with Drake and Justin Bieber
• He’s perceived as a bad boy (criminal charges, selling autographs)
• He’s perceived as a womanizer (at least two girlfriends before the end of his last semester AND he has all kinds of selfies with hotties on Instagram)
• He’s a party guy (two trips to Vegas during camp, rolling a $20 bill in a bar bathroom)
• A bad team is begging for a high-profile savior.
• Heismann Trophy winners tend to be average, if not outright failures in the NFL. We might be rooting for a potential underdog.
• On the flipside, we might be rooting for such a cock-sure kid to fail.

Whatever the reason or group of reasons, the community of NFL fans can’t get enough of this guy. He’s got a pretty good arm and runs around like the Tasmanian Devil in the pocket. It worked in college, but hasn’t seemed to get very far in the pros for predecessors like Michael Vick, Kordell Stewart, and Fran Tarkenton. How many Superbowl rings does Randall Cunningham have? I’ll be watching, and you probably will, too.

Side note, since the Browns are in focus: When does the Josh Gordon suspension come down? The NFL really painted itself into a corner on this one. They suspended Gordon for two games last year after testing positive for a banned substance in his cough syrup and now he reoffends with marijuana. In the meantime, Ray Rice gets suspended for two games for knocking out his girlfriend in Atlantic City. The league already looks bad with Rice, but it will be interesting to see how the spin doctors perform an operation on a blatant CBA misstep, if Gordon gets anything more than two games. There was talk that he would be out for the season.