What Johnny Manziel's Hometown Knows About Its Favorite Son That We Don't
TYLER, Texas — The highlight played over and over in his uncle's restaurant on Old Bullard Road. It flickered on the television screen in the living room of his Little League coach's house. And it flashed repeatedly on a big screen in the golf club where he was a regular as a boy, each frame of the clip a reminder of all that is possible for Johnny Manziel.
Here in the hometown of Johnny Football—a city of 96,000 nestled in the heart of oil country—the play from the second quarter of the Cleveland Browns' season opener against the New York Jets on Sunday has been rehashed and reviewed countless times, dissected like a football Zapruder film. In the 6.1 seconds from snap to whistle, a community of detectives in Tyler has searched for clues in the hope that it will find a missing quarterback.
Facing a 3rd-and-19 from his own 46-yard line, Manziel, who had entered the game for the concussed Josh McCown, dropped back to pass. With the pocket collapsing, Manziel reared back and unleashed a textbook-perfect throw. The ball spiraled beautifully through the bright September sky, traveling the arc of a rainbow. It landed in the arms of receiver Travis Benjamin, who caught it in stride and jogged into the end zone for a 54-yard touchdown.
This play was Manziel operating at the height of his football powers, illustrating his arm strength, his accuracy, his quick decision-making, and his ability to keep his eyes downfield in the face of pressure.
His uncle, Harley Hooper, remembers when Johnny, as a 12-year-old Pop Warner player, would stand in the middle of the field at Hubbard Middle School at practice and throw similar 50-yard bombs that would clank off a rusted goalpost.
"Johnny has worked very hard to get his head on straight and solve his personal problems, and now he's coming back to life," Hooper recalled earlier this month, sitting in the lounge of Villaggio del Vino, a restaurant in Tyler that he co-owns. "He was in a dark place there for some time, but never count this kid out. People have been doing that to him his whole life, and he thrives on it."
Yes, it was just one play against the Jets—Manziel would finish 13-of-24 for 182 yards with one touchdown and one interception in the 31-10 loss—but it raised a legitimate question: Is Johnny Manziel, who was a flop as a rookie and who spent 10 weeks in a rehab facility in Ohio during the offseason, on his way to a career rebirth at the age of 22?
With McCown's status for Sunday's game against the Tennessee Titans unclear as of Tuesday morning, Manziel may start against the defense that last week intercepted Jameis Winston twice and held him to a QBR of 6.7, the lowest among Week 1 starting quarterbacks.
This we know: There are NFL scouts who still very much believe in Johnny.
"It was known throughout the league that when Johnny was coming out of college he was a party guy," said a longtime NFC scout. "But it's now also known throughout the league that Johnny has genuinely turned his life around. He's making all the right decisions off the field. And on the field, he's got the NFL arm, he's got the speed, he's got the intelligence, but he's only 5'11".
"Still, I think he's got a chance to be very good. He was up and down against the Jets, but there was more good than bad. There were times he looked like a young Fran Tarkenton, and that's who he should model his game after. To me, he looks like a new-and-improved Johnny."
To begin to understand this new version of Manziel, you must travel to the place of his birth. Because after the legend of Johnny Football nearly destroyed the person of Jonathan Paul Manziel, Tyler was the place that helped lift him back to his feet.
Once upon a time in this dusty East Texas town, there was a boy named Johnny. This is really how every story about this child should begin, because his life seemed ripped from the pages of a folk tale.
When he was two, Johnny could swing his three-foot-long Fisher-Price golf club as if he were a miniature Ben Hogan, repeatedly blasting plastic golf balls over his backyard pool, over a fence and into the neighbor's yard. Within a decade, Johnny would consistently shoot in the mid-70s at Tyler's Hollytree Country Club, where the Manziels lived off the 16th hole.
"Johnny's hand-eye coordination was mind-boggling," said Hooper of his nephew.
When he was nine, Johnny hit so many baseballs over the left field fence at Golden Road Park in Tyler that the Little League coaches erected a taller fence that resembled a mini-Green Monster. But in his first plate appearance at the newly appointed field, little Johnny, narrowing his eyes in determination, crushed a moonshot over the fence. The ball traveled so far that it broke a woman's bathroom window.
"Johnny was a little guy, but he had big hands, and his feet were as big as the Little League rubber on the pitcher's mound," said Drew Landes, one of Manziel's Little League coaches. "At age 11, he wore size-12 shoes. He always was forgetting his cleats, and we'd have to drive to Wal-Mart to get him a new pair.
"The thing about Johnny was that he was just so intense. He'd get so mad at himself if he failed at something, and he was so aggressive. We'd have to calm him down sometimes, but it showed how badly he wanted to succeed and beat the guys standing in front of him."
When he was 10, Johnny watched the Tyler Hurricanes Pop Warner team from the sideline. Michelle Manziel wouldn't let her little boy play—she was afraid he was too brittle—and so Johnny would pace up and down the sideline during the Hurricanes' games, teeth clenched, his eyes riveted to the action on the field.
The next year, Michelle Manziel relented, and Johnny became the starting quarterback of the Hurricanes. On the first play of his first practice, his coach, Jacky Lee, called a bootleg to Johnny's left.
"Johnny was running sideways to his left and fired a 15-yard bullet across his body that hit our tight end on the money," said Lee. "I looked to an assistant and said, 'This is our go-to guy.'"
But the go-to guy didn't take losing well. Lee remembers seeing him cry after the team lost its first game to a team from South Dallas. "Johnny was hyper-competitive," said Lee. "It was like football was a huge outlet for him."
The beginning of Manziel's problems, according to those who know him best, can be traced to the hour of his greatest triumph. On Nov. 10, 2012, Manziel and Texas A&M knocked off top-ranked Alabama, 29-24, in Tuscaloosa. Manziel was brilliant—the redshirt freshman passed for 253 yards and ran for another 92 yards—as the Aggies snapped the Crimson Tide's 13-game winning streak.
After the game, an overjoyed Michelle tried to hug her son outside the visitor's locker room but was kept at bay by six state troopers.
In a matter of three heart-stopping hours, Manziel—who before the season had briefly contemplated transferring if he wasn't going to be named the starter by coach Kevin Sumlin—had became a national figure.
"Johnny's life did a total 180-degree shift after the Alabama game," said J.B. Moss, one of Manziel's closest friends in Tyler. "He couldn't even go out to eat in College Station because it would cause such a scene. Johnny had never even thought about being famous before. But almost overnight he went from a couple thousand followers on Twitter to a million."
Before the Alabama game, Moss said Manziel had enjoyed a relatively normal and carefree lifestyle, going to Texas Rangers games, golf tournaments and concerts like most other college students.
"He liked to have fun, and his family had money, so it was no big deal," Moss said. "But then the fame thing happens, and then Johnny is having dinner with LeBron James and hanging with Drake. He's still just Johnny having fun, but fans began to question his work ethic. It got to be a lot for Johnny to deal with."
"Johnny went from being a backup quarterback at A&M to, eight months later, winning the Heisman Trophy," said Lee, his old Pop Warner coach. "That is a lot for 20-year-old kid to handle. He certainly enjoyed himself, but who could blame him? He was a college kid having fun."
Edwin Duncan, a longtime family friend in Tyler, worried about Manziel as he watched the hero-worship surrounding Johnny Football grow.
"Girls made themselves available to Johnny, and guys wanted to be Johnny," said Duncan, a vascular surgeon. "When you sit around with Johnny, he's a very polite, low-key guy, someone who I promise you would like. Once he won the Heisman Trophy, he felt pressure to live up to that. Everyone was always looking at him, pointing at him, asking for his autograph. At some point, the demons started running through his head."
Even as a teenager—the Manziel family moved from Tyler to Kerrville, Texas, when Johnny was 13—Manziel enjoyed a frat-boy lifestyle. He once cut a deal with his parents, according to Tim Rohan of the New York Times, that he wouldn't drink in exchange for a new car. (Johnny was presented with a red Camaro the week before the Alabama game in 2012.) At A&M, he underwent counseling for issues with alcohol, according to ESPN The Magazine's Wright Thompson.
Those problems, according to friends and family members, continued to haunt Manziel after Cleveland selected him in the first round of the 2014 NFL draft. Manziel bought an apartment in downtown Cleveland and, in the words of one family member, "began running with people who didn't have Johnny's best interests in their hearts."
"Johnny started to party a little harder," said a family member who requested anonymity. "It got out of control."
Last Dec. 14, Manziel's football career hit rock bottom. In pregame warm-ups before his first NFL start against the Bengals, Manziel repeatedly overthrew receivers—often by 10 yards.
Hooper had flown to Cleveland for the game. He watched from the stands as Johnny looked thoroughly confused and overmatched, tossing two interceptions and completing 10 of 18 passes for 80 yards in the 30-0 loss.
By the time the final whistle blew, Hooper was consumed with one thought: This isn't the Johnny I know.
"At that point, it became clear that something needed to change with Johnny," said Hooper. "We knew he was struggling."
The last domino fell Dec. 27, the day before Cleveland's final game of the season against Baltimore. Manziel slept through a scheduled appointment with the team's medical staff for treatment on his hamstring. He later admitted—to the team and to reporters—that he had been partying into the wee hours of the morning.
"It was a mistake by me," Manziel told reporters. "At the same time, you can sit here and say and talk and say this all you want, but when your actions don't reflect that, and you make a conscious decision to put yourself in that position that you stay out too late and not wake up the next morning, that's going to cause a lot of trouble, so I did that to myself. I brought this on myself."
A few weeks later, Manziel checked into a Pennsylvania rehab clinic for 10 weeks of inpatient therapy. But before he did, he traveled to Tyler one last time for his grandmother's 70th birthday.
Surrounded by about 100 of his family members and closest friends, Manziel appeared at peace, according to family members. It was clear to everyone in attendance that he had made up his mind to change his late-night lifestyle.
"Everyone was happy to see Johnny so happy," said a family member. "It made the party."
A few months later, there were more glimmers that the old Johnny—the Johnny with the bright eyes, the easy smile and the quick wit—was back.
During his rehab stint, he traveled to Tyler for Easter. The extended family gathered at Johnny's parents' place outside of town. Johnny was, by all accounts, the sober life of the party.
He played cards with his beloved grandmother, posed for pictures with his relatives and reminisced about the days of being young and footloose in Tyler. He also explained to those who matter most to him how excited he was to return to Cleveland and make his family proud of him once again.
"We all saw that the fire was back in Johnny," said a family member. "Johnny made so many people happy back when he was playing ball at A&M and doing things on the field that you had to see to believe. Now he wants to bring that same joy to Cleveland. He's been through a storm, but he's coming out the other side of it."
On a bluebird summer morning in Tyler, a middle-aged man who refused to give his name sat atop a lawnmower. He carefully guided the machine over every blade of grass on the Hubbard Middle School athletic field. He steered around the rusted goalpost, kicked up a swirl of dirt as he glided over a bald patch of land and wheeled around a massive oak tree with precision.
He was meticulous in every move he made—he had pride in his craftsmanship—and for good reason: This ground, to him, was hallowed. For this was where Johnny first played football.
"Right here is where the legend was born," said the man, dripping with sweat under the fireball East Texas sun. "And now the legend is coming back. I promise you, he's coming back."
In Tyler, they still believe in the magic of Johnny Football.
Now comes the hard part for Manziel: turning skeptics into believers—one day at a time—1,100 miles away in Cleveland.
That looks like a CLOWN necktie!!!
