THE ABYSS
EXAMINING JOHNNY MANZIEL'S CHECKERED PAST AND MINING HIS INNER CIRCLE IN SEARCH OF ANSWERS: JUST HOW DID THINGS GO SO WRONG SO QUICKLY? HAS HE TAKEN HIS LAST SNAP IN THE NFL AT THE AGE OF 23? AND IF SO, DOES HE EVEN CARE?
FOR 73 DAYS IN THE winter and spring of 2015, Johnny Manziel woke up atop a mountain. In evergreen-thick acres of pastoral eastern Pennsylvania, Manziel was, for the first time in his adult life, secluded.
The Browns' quarterback had entered Caron Treatment Center for undisclosed issues, and when he was discharged, in April—just in time for the team's first off-season workout of 2015—those around him saw a different Manziel. He was more focused, especially when it came to football. He looked less bloated. His skin was even glowing.
For his second season Manziel did not renew the lease on his apartment at The 9, a swanky high-rise in downtown Cleveland bustling with young professional athletes. Instead, he rented a house 25 minutes away, in Avon, Ohio, and asked his high school offensive coordinator, 56-year-old Julius Scott, to move in and be something of a life coach.
On the practice field coaches could tell that Manziel had been studying his playbook more. Teammates noticed he was drinking less. By July there was a sense that Manziel had his life under control.
Within several months, however, Manziel had dismissed Scott; by midseason he had fallen back into self-destructive habits. It's a familiar pattern: Manziel teeters between realizing his potential as a franchise QB and reverting to the kid from Kerrville, Texas, who can't help but sabotage himself.
Manziel's pro career has plunged to new depths following another year of off-field recklessness. On March 11, just 22 months after drafting him 22nd, out of Texas A&M, the Browns cut him. (His final stat line in Cleveland: 14 games, eight starts, seven touchdowns, seven interceptions, seven fumbles and a 57.0% completion rate.) An ugly accusation hangs over him; according to an affidavit, Manziel's former girlfriend Colleen Crowley says that on Jan. 30 he struck her so hard that she could not hear for two days. Her lawyer says she ruptured her eardrum. A Dallas grand jury is contemplating an assault charge.
Manziel was dropped by his agent, Erik Burkhardt (he signed last week with Drew Rosenhaus), and by his marketing team. League sources say that as recently as early January at least two teams—one being the Cowboys—had interest in Manziel. Now, after the alleged assault on Crowley, those sources say that unless Manziel seeks treatment, he's untouchable. His actions since Crowley's accusations surfaced—including chugging bottles at nightclubs from Miami to West Hollywood, making it rain at a strip club—demonstrate such apparent disregard, they raise a question: At 23, does Johnny Football even care if he takes another snap in the NFL?
Neither Manziel nor his parents responded to multiple requests for comment. Denise Michaels, Manziel's publicist, declined an interview request on his behalf. Family lawyer Brad Beckworth said he had "no comment or interest in discussing the matter." But many who have spent time in Manziel's inner circle agreed to speak, believing it was important to accurately depict the tale of the Manziel conundrum. Each person interviewed—Browns and Texas A&M coaches and teammates, lawyers, close friends and family acquaintances—expressed frustration with Manziel, sharing stories that depicted a lack of commitment made worse by a culture of enabling. They all wonder where it went wrong. They also wonder what else could have possibly been done to save Manziel from himself. As one of his former coaches says, "When he had LeBron James as a mentor, texting him all the time, hanging out at his house watching football, and Johnny didn't listen to his advice? That's when I knew he had a problem."
Over the years Manziel has gravitated toward trouble. "The thing is," says Steven Brant, one of Manziel's best friends from Tivy High, "we've been through so much. But no matter what happens, we always seem to figure it out. He always seems to end up O.K."
This time might be different. According to The Dallas Morning News, Manziel's father, Paul, tried getting his son to enter a rehab facility early in the year, shortly after Johnny's 23rd birthday on Dec. 6. When his son refused, Paul told the paper, "I truly believe if they can't get him help, he won't live to see his 24th birthday."
IT WAS the biggest party night of the year, but friends say Manziel wasn't feeling up to it. Perhaps he was still woozy from a Week 16 concussion when he said he would not be going out on New Year's Eve. And so his friends stayed in too, lounging in Manziel's three-bedroom home. They watched Casino, then Sicario, then Spectre, though Manziel nodded off several times.
Such nights are not uncommon for Manziel. Those close to him describe patches when the QB "wants to get right." He will recommit himself to football, sequester himself from the spotlight and, when he has free time, binge on movies. So friends thought nothing of Manziel's sleeping well into the New Year. Two days later, on the eve of Cleveland's finale in another lost season, he vanished. Several people, including Browns coaches, called him repeatedly, each time reaching his voice mail. Manziel, it turns out, was in Las Vegas, sporting a blond wig, glued-on mustache and hoodie, telling people his name was Billy.
Cleveland's coaches were livid but not altogether surprised, Browns sources say; they'd warned Manziel to stay out of trouble several times. Before their bye in Week 11, according to several sources, coach Mike Pettine summoned the QB into his office and said, bluntly: Don't do anything that will embarrass us. Instead, Manziel flew to Austin, where he partied for two straight nights. A DJ captured him on video, which surfaced weeks later.
"The moment [Johnny] saw that video on Twitter," a friend says, "his reaction was literally, 'F---!' He knew he screwed up. He knew he shouldn't have done that."
WEEK 2 of last season marked the rare Sunday afternoon when the nation's eyes trained on FirstEnergy Stadium. It was early enough in the year that optimism in Cleveland was still intact. The visiting quarterback, Titans rookie Marcus Mariota, had dazzled in his debut; the football world was eager to see his encore. But in the end this day would belong to the 2012 Heisman winner, not the one from '14.
When Josh McCown was concussed in the Browns' season opener against the Jets, Manziel came off the bench and was no less erratic than he had been as a rookie. On this Sunday, however, Manziel played with the sort of electricity that had made him a legend at Texas A&M. On Cleveland's second snap he dropped back and connected with speedy wideout Travis Benjamin for a 60-yard touchdown.
But the play that really spoke to America's fascination with Manziel was his last one. With three minutes remaining and the Browns up 21--14, Manziel took a snap in shotgun. Linebacker Brian Orakpo came free off the edge, pushing Manziel out of the pocket and triggering Cleveland's scramble drill: Receivers abandoned their routes and raced for open field. Manziel spun to his left, ran for the sideline and launched a long spiral, again to Benjamin, this time for a 50-yard, victory-sealing score. The Dawg Pound was in a frenzy. Manziel, arms outstretched, sprinted downfield in celebration. The moment seemed to usher in a new era of Browns football.
Afterward, Pettine called the play "vintage Manziel." On the sideline, offensive coordinator John DeFilippo deadpanned, "Coaching is overrated." Even the QB's staunchest critics melted: ESPN analyst Merril Hoge, a long-standing Manziel detractor, called him the Browns' starter "without question."
More important, Manziel himself believed the starting job was his. But when he arrived at the team facility the following Wednesday, Pettine issued unwavering support for McCown, the 14-year journeyman who had cleared concussion protocol. According to sources, Manziel was incredulous. He was a first-round pick and had just led the Browns to their first win in 10 months. He had also done everything the team asked of him since the end of the previous season—the rehab, the move to the suburbs, the reduced drinking.
Perhaps the subsequent months would have played out differently if Scott—one of the first people Manziel thanked in his Heisman speech—had still been in the quarterback's life. At Tivy High in Kerrville, Scott had been the coach who was unafraid to grab Manziel's face mask and berate him for showboating. At the same time, he never ended a conversation without telling the QB that he loved him. In the spring of 2015, Scott had abruptly resigned from his job at a Texas high school for the chance to help Manziel get straight.
The plan had been for Scott to live with Manziel through the 2015 season, an arrangement similar to the one between MLB slugger Josh Hamilton, a recovering addict, and his personal handler, Shayne Kelley. But while Scott took his job seriously, friends say that Manziel eventually found Scott's presence overbearing. By the time camp started, Scott had returned to Texas. (He declined a request to comment for this story.) Crowley moved in soon after.
With no support system in place for Manziel, Browns sources say, the benching instigated a downward spiral. Friends too noticed that Manziel became disengaged after the Titans game, though they saw him regroup a few more times during the season. Before facing the Steelers in Week 10, for example, Manziel acted with confidence after Pettine tapped him as the starter for a second-straight game.
"If Johnny doesn't have a carrot dangling in front of him, he resorts to his default," says one friend. "And his default is not giving a s---."
Ultimately the Tennessee game would prove to be one of the rare highlights in Manziel's Cleveland tenure. Even during that confidence-filled two-game stretch in November, he was ineffective, save for the occasional improvised play.
Manziel wanted to party again, so he did, often showing up late for meetings and, according to a team source, sometimes sleeping off hangovers in the back of an equipment room. In October police released a dash-cam video of a traffic stop involving an argument between Manziel and Crowley during which, Crowley claimed, she had been hit "a couple of times." (Manziel denied hitting Crowley. She did not press charges, and the NFL did not impose discipline.) There was the bye-week partying in Austin. There was Billy Vegas. And finally—and most seriously—there was the assault accusation leveled by Crowley.
WHILE IT'S true that no Cleveland resident under the age of 50 has seen a hometown team win a championship in a major professional sports league, the hapless Browns seem to have been plagued by an especially cruel mix of bad luck and dysfunction.
Manziel's arrival in the spring of 2014 was reason enough to celebrate, to imagine a brighter future. In the 12 hours after the draft the Browns sold more than 1,500 season tickets. The team began asking fans to register online just to attend training camp. By July, Manziel led the league in jersey sales.
But in hindsight, it's fair to ask: Did the Browns' coaching staff ever really want Johnny Manziel?
After an extended draft-night wait in the green room, Manziel—projected to go as high as No. 2, to the Rams, but selected with Cleveland's second pick—took the stage, flashed the money sign and stoked the Browns' fan base. Afterward, he took a car from Radio City Music Hall to a private party: no media, no fanfare; just close friends. Along the way, he and his small posse—Brant and another childhood friend, Deron Belford, along with Scott—made a pit stop at a Lids store in midtown Manhattan and bought every piece of Browns merchandise.
While Manziel and his new fans celebrated, one Cleveland assistant says the coaching staff was less thrilled with a selection that had, according to one Browns source, come down from ownership.
"Johnny never really felt like the coaches wanted him there," a close friend says.
That suspicion intensified as the season wore on. Manziel had never worked from a playbook before entering the NFL—Texas A&M issued players weekly game plans—and now he barely studied the one the Browns put in front of him. He struggled through weekly quarterback tests. At practice the offense would run a set of 10 scripted plays, with Manziel, the backup, running only two. He would brush up on those two plays, and only those two plays.
"When he was thrust into [the starter's] role, it became very clear he had no idea what was going on," says one former Browns coach. "He went out there and had no clue."
When starter Brian Hoyer was injured that first year and Manziel was asked to do more, he'd often blank. Offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan—a system-first, players-second coach—simplified his packages for Manziel so much, one Browns source says, "you or I could have lined up under center."
Manziel was often detached at practice. On an especially cool afternoon he snarkily remarked, "I bet it's nice in Dallas right now." That irked many in the organization, including some teammates, though the QB was never unpopular in the locker room. Far from it. Many players seemed to gravitate toward Manziel, who was charming and cool. He was also loyal, picking up the tab anytime a friend visited Cleveland, buying friends Rolex watches just because, or taking time to engage in conversation with a teammate's or coach's kids.
"That's the thing most people don't understand about Johnny," a Browns source says. "His teammates all love him and stand up for him."
Which helps to explain how Manziel was able to get away with coasting in Cleveland, the way he had at College Station. There's a popular story about an informal Aggies practice that took place the summer after Johnny Football's Heisman season, a whirlwind period of meet-and-greets and shoulder-rubbing with A-listers. Manziel arrived late to this particular session, but the moment he got there, he was mobbed by teammates excited to see him. Manziel jumped right into the seven-on-seven drill, still in his jeans, and led his team on a touchdown drive.
JOHNNY MANZIEL'S introduction to the college football world came by way of a shirtless booking photo one summer earlier, after Manziel's redshirt freshman season. On the morning of July 29, 2012, Manziel woke up in a jail cell. Hours earlier he and Brant had been at a College Station bar. According to a police report Brant said something that was taken by an African-American patron as a racial slur. Manziel tried to make peace, but he was drunk, and he began fighting with the man in what police described as "mutual combat." Manziel, one officer wrote, "appeared to be so intoxicated he could not answer my questions about the incident except to tell me that he wanted a ride home and was sorry." Ultimately, he was charged with disorderly conduct, failure to identify himself and possession of a fake ID.
The arrest barely registered on the national college football radar. The extent of ESPN's coverage was a 266-word Associated Press story online. SI.com ran just a 55-word blurb. Even the local paper, The Eagle, out of Bryan, Texas, ran this headline: TEXAS A&M FRESHMAN IN LINE FOR QUARTERBACK POSITION ARRESTED. Outside of Kerrville, Manziel was not yet a name worthy of display type.
It was a big deal, though, to Kevin Sumlin, who had just taken over as the Aggies' coach. Manziel's parents convened on campus with the coach, together creating a checklist for the freshman if he wanted to become a starter: community service, meetings with a counselor, extra running and no partying. (Manziel's parents, meanwhile, hired a lawyer for the three misdemeanor charges. The disorderly conduct and fake ID charges were dropped, while Manziel pleaded guilty to failure to properly identify himself.)
But five weeks later Manziel heard from the school's disciplinary board: He had been placed on "conduct probation," with a one-semester ban from intercollegiate athletics that included the 2012 football season. According to one source, Manziel was livid. Just as he would feel in the wake of that Titans victory three years later, he believed he had done everything asked of him.
As Manziel appealed the suspension, he began looking into junior colleges; if Texas A&M wouldn't let him play, he would transfer. But just as he prepared to split, Sumlin wrote a letter to school officials vouching that Manziel had already faced punishment. On Aug. 14 the dean of student life overturned Manziel's suspension. The next day he was named Texas A&M's starting quarterback.
Within three months Johnny Football was born. On Nov. 10 he led A&M to a shocking upset of top-ranked Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. When he returned to campus, police escorted him to class because he could barely walk a block without students stopping him. He had become the cult hero that was missing from college football since Tim Tebow's graduation. The difference: Tebow's ascent was more gradual—he was a prized recruit and saw part-time action as a true freshman—and didn't occur in the age of Twitter and Instagram.
Manzielmania had arrived at the perfect time for Texas A&M, which was in the midst of a transformation, introducing itself to the SEC and undergoing a massive stadium renovation. On the field, Manziel flourished amid chaos, extending plays and using his slight frame to evade defenders. "In a lot of ways, he was the anti--Texas A&M personality," says Jason Cook, the Aggies' senior associate athletic director, who was directly involved with all marketing campaigns in 2013. "The university has always been known as tradition-rich and conservative. Johnny was flashy, he was confident, he was unpredictable. That's something that attracted both Aggies and non-Aggies."
A&M was flooded with phone calls, not only from SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and ESPN, but also from PEOPLE and TMZ. The athletic department huddled to strategize. They would assign one staffer whose sole responsibility was to handle all Manziel-related media requests. Part of the intrigue grew from mystique: During that Heisman season Sumlin would not relent in his policy of barring freshmen from speaking to the media.
The next summer, when allegations arose that Manziel had violated NCAA rules by accepting money from a broker in exchange for autographs, his punishment was a half-game suspension in the season opener, against Rice. (Never mind that in 2013, largely attributable to Manziel, the university reaped $740 million in pledges and gifts, an all-time record for a public university.) At halftime against the Owls, A&M led by seven. It took Manziel just 20 minutes of game time to stretch that lead to 24. And he flaunted it, celebrating touchdowns by miming signing an autograph and gesturing his now-famous money sign. He wasn't benched until he picked up a 15-yard taunting penalty in the fourth quarter, with the game out of reach.
The message was clear: Manziel was untouchable.
MANZIEL GREW up in an affluent family, enriched for generations by the oil industry. When he was in seventh grade, the family moved from East Texas to Kerrville (pop. 23,000), 65 miles northwest of San Antonio. Tucked in the hills, it's a placid town, seducing retirees with two museums, a folk festival and three golf courses. But that serenity was interrupted in the summer of 2011, when Belford, one of the high school's star athletes, was indicted on three charges related to two separate accusations of sexual assault.
"Charges like this in a town like Kerrville?" says Mark Stevens, Belford's attorney. "You bet this was a big case around here." Belford, then 18 and an all-state point guard, was one month away from enrolling at Texas State on a basketball scholarship. He pleaded not guilty to all three charges, but TSU revoked the offer.
According to court documents, Belford was charged with sexually assaulting two females at two different parties, in 2010 and '11. (The accusers each came forward months after the incidents occurred.) The Kerr County District Court tried the cases separately. The first trial began in April '12. The 12-member jury was all female. The victim testified, describing how at a group get-together her friends peeled off in pairs, how she and Belford were alone in the home and how he forced himself on her. Then the defense called on its star witness, and those in the courtroom that day recall a collective audible gasp as his name was announced: Skyping from his College Station dorm room, Johnny Manziel.
The quarterback had yet to suit up for Texas A&M, but he was already legendary in Kerrville—during his senior year at Tivy, his dazzling play had attracted such crowds that school officials were forced to use a nearby mall for overflow parking and shuttle supporters to games. Manziel's parents' home in Kerrville was said to have been the site of one of the alleged incidents, and Belford was one of Manziel's best friends; besides playing basketball, Belford was a standout wide receiver. Even then, the defense was surprised that Manziel agreed to participate, testifying for roughly 20 minutes while he was 200 miles away.
The jury entered deliberations the next day, and after just hours it found Belford not guilty.
Belford wept when he heard the verdict. The second trial, scheduled for June and covering two charges, never happened: Belford entered a plea bargain after the district attorney dismissed one charge and reduced the other to misdemeanor assault. "He was able to move on with his life," says Stevens. Until it unspooled again.
In April 2013, after Manziel won the Heisman Trophy, the QB was feted in Kerrville. A ceremony in town was followed by a house party with friends and their parents, alcohol flowing freely. Belford was drinking a Coors Light when Keith Williams, a Kerr County district judge, approached him. "You're not supposed to be drinking that," Williams said.
As a result, Belford served nearly two months in prison for violating his probation. He'd lost any chance of ever playing college basketball, all because he couldn't resist grabbing a beer. For a young star athlete like Manziel, who himself had been arrested a year earlier, his close friend's imprisonment might have served as a cautionary tale. Considering Manziel's current predicament, he apparently never saw it that way.
MANY IN the Browns' organization believed that Julius Scott would be able to keep Manziel focused and peel him away from a lingering entourage from Texas. But Manziel is rarely alone. Friends say his phone and FaceTime logs can reach double digits by midafternoon. If he's not around friends, he's talking to them. Manziel's old marketing team tried to separate the quarterback from this group. On several occasions they plopped him in front of a whiteboard, mapping the times he got in trouble and the people he was with when those incidents occurred. But the public mishaps kept coming.
Some friends from Texas A&M wonder whether Manziel's life could have been different if he had stayed in school his junior season and worked through maturity issues within the confines of college. People from Kerrville still speak glowingly of Manziel and the excitement he brought to Tivy High, but visiting the town provides a stark reminder that life moves on. In early February, storefronts were decorated with posters congratulating quarterback Cade Dyal, Tivy's new career leader in completions, yards and TD passes.
Every person interviewed for this story, unprompted, issued a variation of the same sentiment: I still love the guy. Each one also expressed worry over Manziel's latest partying binge. A few people close to him questioned whether he even wants to play in the NFL anymore. One suggested it's impossible to predict his next career move "until he hits rock bottom."
And that might be the scariest thing: No one is sure when things will get better for Johnny Manziel. But almost everyone seems resigned to the fact that things will get worse.
"WHEN HE HAD LEBRON AS A MENTOR, AND JOHNNY DIDN'T LISTEN TO HIS ADVICE," SAYS ONE FORMER COACH, "I KNEW HE HAD A PROBLEM."
"IF JOHNNY DOESN'T HAVE A CARROT IN FRONT OF HIM, HE RESORTS TO HIS DEFAULT," SAYS A FRIEND. "AND HIS DEFAULT IS NOT GIVING A S---."
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO PREDICT MANZIEL'S NEXT CAREER MOVE, SAYS ONE CLOSE FRIEND, "UNTIL HE HITS ROCK BOTTOM."
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TITAN TWO-STEP Save for one shining moment against Tennessee, Manziel's first two seasons boiled down to a lot of dancing and little else.
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LAID-BACCHUS Coming of age in the social media era, Manziel has seen his off-field activities well-documented on Twitter and Instagram.
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END OF THE ROAD The last straw, as many see it, was an incident (near left) in which, Manziel's girlfriend alleged, the quarterback struck her.
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MONEY PIT For all the flash he showed at the 2014 draft, Manziel was not the QB Browns coaches wanted, according to an assistant.
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