Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix
Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix – A new Netflix documentary shows the college football great as a man unwilling – or perhaps unable – to move on from his past.
Even the most casual US sports fan isn’t likely to have forgotten about Johnny Manziel, football’s Charlie Sheen.
The latest installment of Netflix’s sports documentary series Untold devotes an episode to the bad boy quarterback’s controversy-stained rise in college football, his NFL flameout and his off-field tumble into infamy and disgrace.
Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix – Titled Untold: Johnny Football, the 72-minute runtime barely covers everything, and resolves even less.
For a start, director Ryan Duffy could have fast-forwarded through Manziel’s humble Texas small town beginnings and jumped straight to 12 November 2012: the day Manziel led Texas A&M to a shock upset over the vaunted Alabama on the Crimson Tide’s hallowed home turf.
That victory, the film rightly points out, didn’t just make Manziel a household name across the US.
Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix – It also changed the economics at Texas A&M, a military school in the Lone Star hinterlands that had recently jumped into the SEC – the top-level conference known for churning out future pros.
Background of Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix
Johnathan Paul Manziel was born December 6, 1992.
He played two seasons with the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) and was also a member of the Canadian Football League’s CFL) Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Montreal Alouettes in 2018 and the Alliance of American Football’s (AAF) Memphis Express in 2019.
Manziel was nationally recruited out of high school as a dual-threat quarterback, and he debuted for the Texas A&M Aggies as a redshirt freshman in Kevin Sumlin’s Air Raid offense during A&M’s first season in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in 2012.
TexAgs users tagged Manziel with the nickname “Johnny Football” during Manziel’s sophomore high school football season in Texas.
The nickname followed him to Texas A&M University.
Manziel applied for and was granted a registered trademark for the nickname in 2013.
He broke numerous NCAA Division I FBS and SEC records, which included becoming the first freshman and fifth player in NCAA history to pass for 3,000 yards and rush for 1,000 yards in a season.
At the end of the regular season, he became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, Manning Award, and the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award.
Manziel capitalized on his redshirt freshman season by leading Texas A&M to a 41–13 victory over Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl.
Manziel was drafted by the Browns as the 22nd overall pick of the 2014 NFL Draft.
Despite some success, he struggled with consistency and his tenure was overshadowed by off-field controversies.
He was released by the Browns after the end of the 2015 season.
Following further controversies during the 2016 offseason, Manziel was not signed by another team before the start of the season and spent two years away from football until he returned with the Canadian Football League’s Tiger-Cats in 2018.
Manziel was inducted into the Texas A&M Athletics Hall of Fame in September 2022.
Texas A&M Donations – Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix
In less than a year, Texas A&M saw its donations more than double to $740M as spread from shore to shore, and boiled over when the cocksure QB made history as the first freshman to win the Heisman trophy, college football’s top individual prize.
Those millions helped finance a hefty raise for head coach Kevin Sumlin and pay for a raft of athletics facilities upgrades.
It was only a matter of time before Manziel went diving across the NCAA’s bright red line that stopped college athletes from earning money.
He couldn’t have wanted for a better lead blocker than Nate Fitch, his childhood chum who masterminded an autographs-for-cash scheme that had Manziel flashing cash at private parties with Drake and LeBron James and crisscrossing the country on private jets.
When schoolmarms questioned the wretched excess, Fitch said it was him who came up with the idea for Manziel to say his apparently middle-class family was actually sitting on tons of oil money.
When the NCAA investigated, Fitch took the fall and Manziel, who risked losing his playing eligibility, was suspended for a half game.
After slipping that trap, the man known as Johnny Football was convinced nothing could bring him down.
Cleveland Browns Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix
Netflix’s “Untold” series released an episode on “Johnny Football,” that gave fans a look behind the curtain on “Manziel Mania.”
The Cleveland Browns selected Manziel with the No. 22 overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft.
However, he played just 14 games for the franchise in two years before being released after several off-field issues.
In the film, Manziel revealed that achieving his football dreams left him feeling empty inside.
“Didn’t take me very long to be in Cleveland to find out that I wasn’t going to be happy there,” Manziel said.
“I had every single thing that I could have ever wanted.
You have money, you have fame, you’re a first-round draft pick battling for a starting quarterback position.
And when I got everything that I wanted, I think I was the most empty that I’ve ever felt inside.”
Johnny Manziel signed a 4 year, $8,248,596 contract with the Cleveland Browns, including a $4,318,980 signing bonus, $7,998,596 guaranteed, and an average annual salary of $2,062,149.
Manziel went 2-6 as the starter in his NFL career, and completed 57% of his passes for 1,675 yards, seven touchdowns and seven interceptions to go along with 259 rushing yards and another score.
Johnny Football Manziel on Netflix
What is Johnny Football doing now?
According to USA Today, Manziel plays a lot of golf and is reportedly opening up a sports bar in the fall of 2023 called “Johnny Manziel’s Money Bar.”
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