This is a story about Johnny Manziel, which means it’s not a football story.
It’s not a football story because Manziel is not a football player.
He was cut by the Cleveland Browns, the team that just two years ago spent a first-round draft pick on him. For the second time in a little less than three months, Manziel’s agent severed relations with him. With Nike dropping him as an endorser, per ESPN’s Darren Rovell, he doesn’t even have any endorsement deals left.
Look at this guy:
Johnny Manziel and Josh Gordon go to Coachella https://t.co/m95bKgJ3ug pic.twitter.com/DY0RGMgrm6
— theScore NFL (@theScoreNFL) April 18, 2016
That guy is not an NFL quarterback.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a stoner at Coachella. A lot of hard-partying young men use and abuse booze and drugs in their early- and mid-20s, then get on the straight and narrow when they realize there’s only so much happiness to be found in a bottle or a bong.
Some learn to incorporate substance abuse into their daily grind; a lot of the American business world devoutly subscribes to the “work hard, play hard” motto:
Manziel, to hear him tell it, thinks he can be the NFL’s Mark Zuckerberg.
“I’m hoping to take care of the issues in front of me right now,” Manziel said in a statement released Tuesday through his spokesperson Denise Michaels, quoted here via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com, “so I can focus on what I have to do if I want to play in 2016.”
Manziel knows he needs to straighten up before football starts—so if he’s not hurting anyone, what’s the problem?
The problem is, Manziel is hurting people.
According to the AP, the Dallas County district attorney is bringing Manziel’s domestic violence charges before a grand jury; he could be indicted as early as Monday. The ugly, scary, bizarre night he put his ex-girlfriend Colleen Crowley through is at least the second time substance abuse became intertwined with Manziel’s physical abuse of Crowley.
Back in February, Manziel’s father told the Dallas Morning News that he was worried his son might not live to see his 24th birthday, after Manziel repeatedly refused to go into rehab.
Since that statement, both Manziel’s original agent Eric Burkhart and subsequent agent Drew Rosenhaus have severed ties with Manziel, both citing his substance abuse, refusal to enter treatment and unwillingness to listen to anyone willing to help him get off the party bus and on the wagon.
Manziel’s partying may also have derailed the career of Browns receiver Josh Gordon, who was at Coachella with Manziel despite reportedly having his bid for reinstatement delayed by a positive drug test.
Manziel has hit football rock bottom: He no longer has any professional connection to the NFL, and zero prospects for that to change any time soon. He has friends in the league, like Denver’s Von Miller. But if they’re giving him good advice, he’s clearly not taking it.
His exploits are making non-stop headlines (too many to recount here), and he doesn’t look or act like football is any kind of priority in his life. Even if an NFL team watched his Browns tape and saw a player worth bringing in—and that’s a non-trivial if—his refusal to even cool it on the public intoxication make him radioactive.
Even if a team were willing to take the risk of him slipping up again, the PR backlash would be massive. No team would willingly take on the headlines and headaches that would come with underwriting Manziel’s cocaine-and-bikini-model budget.
Even if a team were willing to overlook all of that and sign him to a contract, God only knows how Roger Goodell, the NFLPA and the rest of the league powers will handle a guy with a potential domestic violence trial ahead of him and a trail of drug bags and trashed rental houses behind him. The best-case scenario at that point is probably Double Secret Probation (aka, the commissioner’s exempt list) for some extended time, then a massive suspension that would likely wipe out the rest of 2016 and potentially all of 2017.
Even if Johnny Manziel dropped whatever he was doing right now, walked over to the Church of Football, confessed every single one of his many sins, took the Vows of Obedience and became a football monk for the rest of his life, he might not even be allowed to practice with a team until the 2018 offseason.
That’s why Manziel’s statement is all the more damning: He knows he should be paying lip service to doing the right thing, but if he thinks he’ll be playing NFL football this fall, he’s completely unmoored from reality. He has zero inkling of the impact his choices have already made. He’s never had to face the music before, so doesn’t recognize the symphony blasting the 1812 Overture right at him.
He’s hit football rock bottom, but he’s still freefalling towards personal rock bottom.
That fall is not a football story. Johnny Manziel partying in public is not football news. Sports media have to stop covering this young man as if he’s a football player. He isn’t one right now, and there isn’t any path for him to become one any time soon. Continuing to frame the Johnny Football Instagram Disaster of the Day in terms of his nonexistent football career only perpetuates the myth he’s coasting on right now.
Manziel is a privileged young man who’s lost his way, and his career. From all available evidence, he’s an addict, and an abuser of women. He’s a long way off even the Zuckerbergian path to success, and it looks like he’ll be wandering in the darkness for a long time before he finds it.
Gawking at the trainwreck that is Manziel’s life has become might be interesting for some, but it isn’t sports.
