Boom/Bust -- Johnny Manziel

I'm going to call him a BUST.

Johnny Manziel has gone into Tim Tebow supernova territory. The most talked about, controversial, egotistical player this draft. You either love him or hate him. I have gone back and forth on him. The whole Johnny Football craze in 2012 made me hate him. If there ever was a Johnny Football it would be Johnny Unitas and I love Johnny Unitas. Then everyone started to hate him in the offseason and I've been accused of Skip Baylissing as at that time the Johnny Football craze had died down and I was like, okay, I like him. He's a frat star. He gets it in. He's cool. For the record, I would rather have one testicle than be accused of Skip Baylissing. What that means if you don't know is that you take the opposing view just to be controversial and drive a story.

Then the 2013 season started and up until the end of the season I was a Johnny Football fan. Here's the thing. If you play SMU or Sam Houston State those games can only hurt you. You can get hurt or have a pedestrian 250 passing yards and 3 TDs and it's like yeah you just played Sam Houston State. You're supposed to kill them. Even if you throw for 400 yards and 6 TDs, it's thrown out because a guy from Sam Houston State wouldn't even be in "A" ball if football had the minor leagues. You really just throw those performances out because at the next level the bad defenses still have players littered from the top programs in the country. Sorry, John, I don't remember.

Looking at his tape the only two good defenses with NFL players being drafted from them are Missouri and LSU. It really was a down year for SEC defenses. Granted, there were a lot of good QBs this year in the SEC. Maybe the best overall group this century. I put the tape portion of the grading process in those two games and those two games alone, as well as LSU and Alabama last year. Missouri should have two or maybe three players drafted in the first three rounds and LSU should have at least two as well as some other late round guys. It needs addressed right now.

What about Alabama? Shut the fuck up before you hurt yourself. You look at the box scores you say hey Alabama had a good defense this year. Shut up they didn't play a soul. They played four good TEAMS all year, one of which was the bowl game. Not good offenses or good defenses they played Oklahoma and only three good teams in the SEC. The supposed tyrannical government dominating the NCAA until this year. Alabama went 2-2 against good teams. Here's Alabama's schedule: VT (most overrated team EVER and it happens every year), Texas A&M (1), Colorado State (sucks), Mississippi (sucks), GA State (sucks), Kentucky (sucks), Arkansas (sucks), Tennessee (you guessed it.. sucks), LSU (2), Mississippi State (sucks), Chattanooga (flying suck), Auburn (3) , Oklahoma (4). They gave up 138 points against those four teams and 60 points to the other 9 teams combined. Catch my drift.

Now that Alabama is out of the way. Good God. We can return to Manziel's performance against good defenses. He was completely overmatched. The speed of LSU's pass rush was overwhelming not only this year but last year as well. He was constantly overthrowing receivers as he had to stay in the pocket and it was amazing to see CBs not watch Mike Evans catch a ball where Manziel dicks around, heaves it up and says 500. Those are the kind of guys you will be playing against in the NFL every single week.

Manziel really is easy to stop. You just have your DEs contain and throw maybe even a QB spy and he's not doing anything. Make him beat you with his arm. Manziel doesn't have a strong arm. Accuracy is decent. I don't remember too many difficult throws he's made. He's thrown some fly's, slants, outs, but not too many of the more difficult throws far hash to a corner route on the opposite side of the field. Maybe a deep cross through the tiny window. He would scramble make it manageable and get the first down. Not happening in the pros my friend. Many of his big plays are prayers in the NFL that get knocked down or picked off. He's not entirely intelligent. I don't think I've ever seen him change a play at the line. His game is improvisational. He's a backyard QB. LSU's speed was too much for him and he completed 39% of his passes against them this year. It was really ugly. It also looked like he quit on his team. He's not the leader of my football team I'll tell you that much right now. In his two games against LSU, Manziel has 1 TD and 5 INTs with a combined completion percentage of 46%. Yikes! Tim Tebow and Josh Freeman territory. He was neutralized when he tried to scramble and that tells me it's not going to work in the NFL.

All of that just to capture a portion of the FLASH rating. Against good opponents, outside of the Alabama game that won him the Heisman he was very average or awful.

The next order of business is about his size. He's too small. In a picture next to Cliff, or maybe it was Chris Paul, I couldn't tell, he was shorter than him. Paul is listed at six foot. Next to Jameis Winston, who is listed at 6'4" and rape victim says 6'2" Manziel's head was roughly an inch above his nose. I'm calling Manziel (x-4.5) to Jameis Winston. He's 4.5 inches shorter. Now, someone doesn't confuse a legit 6'4" with 6'2". 6'1", 6'2", 6'3" you're tall compared to the average of 5'10" or whatever it is, but when you're 6'4" you're a giant, and this girl would really be looking up to him and with a 6'2" allegation she wasn't really looking up to him that much. Catch my drift.

Then his weight. This is durability. The way he plays, this is critical. How many hits can he take dancing around like a ballerina? Will he even be able to do that with Patrick Willis flying at him? He is listed at 6'1" 215 LBs. Jameis Winston is listed at 6'4" 228 LBs. Do you see the difference? Manziel has no muscle on his body and has chicken legs and you look at Winston and he's a bull. You're supposed to tell me 10 pounds separates the two when you have midget versus grown ass man. When you're taller you can hide the weight bc of a bigger frame and you're going to tell me Johnny Manziel is this condensed strong man. I think not. He's a tot. Manziel prediction 5'11" 3/8 195 LBs. I expect batted balls to be somewhat of a problem for him in his career.

I think so many of his big plays are not replicable in the pro game. Like jumping over an OL and then escaping. That DL grabs you and you go nowhere. Put it this way. Jared Allen grabbed Ben Roethlisberger with ONE ARM and Ben couldn't move. Ben is considered the toughest QB to bring to the turf and one hand is all it took. You think a finger can take down Manziel?

I look at character. The QB is everything. Good QB you win, bad QB you lose. Does character matter? I think he's more concerned with hanging out with celebrities and being a celebrity than being the best QB ever. I already said he looked like he gave up on his team against LSU that night. What kind of guy do you want? Do you want the guy that when it's going great to be chipper or when shit hits the fan he doesn't care up or down ten he's going to fight until the end. I prefer the latter.

He gets knocked for character, durability, height, arm strength, subpar accuracy, intelligence, transferability of game to the NFL, and performance against top echelon opponents. It all adds up to five years from now you going with their first round pick the Houston Texans select …. QB