Johnny Manziel

Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach June Jones expects Johnny Manziel to serve as the backup to Jeremiah Masoli for the entire 2018 CFL season.

According to ESPN.com's Mike Rodak, Jones said after Wednesday's practice: "I would say Jeremiah is doing very, very well. Until something creates for me to take him out of there, I would say he'll be our starter for the whole year, hopefully, and win the Grey Cup."

Manziel signed with the Tiger-Cats on Saturday and made a two-year commitment to play for the team.

The 29-year-old Masoli, who played collegiately at Oregon and Ole Miss, has been Hamilton's primary starter in each of the past two seasons.

In 2017, Masoli threw for 3,177 yards, 15 touchdowns and five interceptions while rushing for 446 yards and four scores.

While Johnny Football is currently viewed as a backup, Ticats wide receiver Jalen Saunders expressed his belief Wednesday that Manziel looks to be in fine form: "He looks like himself out there. He made some great plays, running around and whatnot. He's been throwing. His arm looks live. ... He's older, more mature now. He has the pro experience from the NFL. He has some things he's picking up as we're going, but he looks great out here."

With the exception of the Spring League, the 25-year-old Manziel last played a competitive game of football in 2015.

After Manziel's successful collegiate career at Texas A&M, which included his winning the Heisman Trophy, the Cleveland Browns selected him with the No. 22 overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft.

In two seasons with the Browns, Manziel went 2-6 as a starter and finished with 1,675 passing yards, seven touchdowns and seven interceptions as well as 259 rushing yards and one score.

Off-field issues led to his release, but Manziel will have a chance to rebuild his value in Canada even if the initial plan is for him to sit and learn behind Masoli.

Will Johnny Manziel meet expectations in the CFL? Will gambling ruin the NFL? Should Julio Jones hold out? Answers to those questions and more in this week's 10-Point Stance.

              

1. Warren Moon and Cris Carter "wouldn't be surprised if [Manziel] struggled"

Warren Moon is in two Halls of Fame: the Pro Football one in Canton, Ohio, and the Canadian Football one in Hamilton, Ontario. Moon can talk about both leagues extensively, but it's his knowledge of the CFL that's become more relevant for the moment. Because that's where Johnny Manziel is.

And based on what Moon says, if you believe Manziel will go to the CFL and wreck that league, well, hold on just a minute.

Asked what he thought the chances of Manziel succeeding were in the CFL, Moon responded, "I think the odds are 50-50, at best, to be honest."

Why?

"The league is a lot faster and harder-hitting than people think," Moon told me. 

Cris Carter played football at Ohio State, was the best route runner in NFL history and is in the Hall of Fame. And he has some perspective on the NFL, too. Carter's son, Duran Carter, plays wide receiver for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

Carter's thought on Manziel and the CFL?

"I wouldn't be surprised if he struggled," Carter wrote to me.

Manziel signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and it was a smart move. It gives Manziel a pseudo-NFL environment to prove himself. If he plays well, he can use the CFL as a springboard back to the NFL. Or, as Moon suggested, it's possible Manziel makes a career in the CFL.

What's certain is the CFL will be a huge challenge for Manziel, both on and off the field.

"It's going to be an ego-crusher for him, first of all," Moon said. "He was a star at Texas A&M, he was a first-round draft pick and now he's in the CFL. He's also going to Hamilton, and I don't mean anything against the city, but it's not one of the glamour cities in the league."

And on the field?

"The game is a lot more complex with more talented players than what he faced in college," Moon said. 

Carter broke the challenge facing Manziel down into three major points. 

"I wish it was one thing," he said.

His first point: "CFL is better than the SEC/college football."

If you don't watch the CFL regularly, you might not understand this. The CFL is a really good league. It's a notch below the NFL but is superior to even the best college football. The league has featured players like Moon, Doug Flutie, Raghib Ismail (one of the top 100 college football players of all time) and Cameron Wake, among many others.

In college, Manziel was fast. During his time with the Browns, he looked slow at times. The CFL isn't as fast of a league as the NFL, but it's only a notch below.

Could the wider CFL field (65 yards versus the NFL's 53) help Manziel? Yes, it could, but remember: CFL defenders are quick and are used to the field's dimensions. Manziel isn't. 

Carter's second point: "First down is more important."

You only get three downs to get 10 yards in the CFL, so you can't throw away downs. That means Manziel will have to get more accurate. He completed just 57.0 percent of his passes in his two years with the Browns.

He did have a first-down completion percentage of 67.8 in the NFL, so that's something to build on.

Carter's last point was perhaps the most important: "12 defenders."

The CFL has 12 players on each side of the ball, which means more blitzers and more hits on the QB. If you think NFL quarterbacks get hit hard and often, watch a CFL game. Their quarterbacks get blasted.

Manziel is 6'0" and around 200 pounds. He's smallish by pro football standards. Will his body take that kind of punishment?

Flutie was a small player, too, and his body held up, so maybe that means Manziel will be OK.

"The main thing I would tell him is have fun," Moon said. "The CFL is fun."

Having fun has never been a problem for Manziel. Now, he just has to perform.

            

2. One last thing on Manziel

Moon had one of the strongest arms in the history of the NFL. He could throw a football through Voyager's ablative armored hull. Yet even for Moon, throwing the football in parts of Canada was difficult.

"I know he played in Cleveland, and it gets windy and cold there, obviously," Moon said, "but he will play in some cities in Canada where the wind is just incredible. The wind can really carry the football. It was one of the toughest things about playing football there. And the cold is a different level of cold in some parts of Canada. It really affects how you play the game."

          

3. Gambling and conspiracy theories

Unless you've been buried under an asteroid, you know by now the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that states are allowed to legalize gambling on sports.

This will lead to myriad issues that the NFL and other leagues will face.

One that's significant but perhaps not obvious: an increase in the power of conspiracy theories.

We are, after all, a conspiratorial nation. We love a good conspiracy theory.

But what I'm hearing from people in the league is that there is a real fear that legalized gambling will lead to a conspiracy-theory universe that could affect real-life coaching decisions.

One NFL head coach gave me the following scenario: He benches a player on the day of a game for disciplinary reasons. But he keeps that reason secret, as many coaches and organizations would do. The outcry from such a move, the coach thinks, would be so loud and so full of conspiratorial chatter, it might actually even make a coach rethink the action.

This was already the case with gamblers. Now, with gambling on games expected to increase dramatically, the pressure will only skyrocket.

                     

The presumptive new owner of the Panthers, David Tepper, did something recently that I've rarely seen an NFL owner do. He showed public retrospection.

It's worth watching his commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University:

What I find remarkable about it isn't even so much the story he conveys as it is the fact that he tells it at all. Most NFL owners are highly protective of their image and don't let too much humanity peek through their carefully crafted personas.

Not all NFL owners, but many I've known.

Tepper will obviously be different, and that's good news. The league needs different.

         

5. Will Julio Jones hold out?

If Julio Jones doesn't get a new deal, will he be at Falcons training camp?

The answer is: Probably he will, but we can't say for certain.

Here's the other question, and it's perhaps more pertinent: Does Jones have a right to be upset about his salary?

The answer is hell yes.

Jones' $14.3 million average salary remains one of the best bargains in all of sports. Pittsburgh's Antonio Brown might be the only better receiver in the NFL, but Jones is paid the eighth best. The only better bargain for a team is Odell Beckham Jr., and his salary jumps from $1.8 million to $8.5 million this year, the final under his rookie contract.

There's also the fact that Matt Ryan earns $30 million a year.

Let's do the math (carry the one, multiply, feed the computer). This means Ryan makes more than twice what Jones does.

Don't think that isn't part of this for Jones.

So would Jones hold out of training camp if no new deal is struck by then? We don't know.

But he'd have every right to.

                   

6. Willie Roaf is thriving

Maybe the best offensive lineman I ever saw was Willie Roaf. If you don't remember him, you need to take a moment and Google him.

Roaf was one of the first 300-pound-plus linemen who moved with great speed and precision. He was 6'5" and 320 pounds and could maul a player, or use his speed and wits to out-technique them. He was the complete player. Roaf made the Hall of Fame in 2012.

Roaf wasn't satisfied with what he accomplished in football, though, and always had an eye on the future. A lot of players struggle once their careers are done. Not Roaf. He saved his money and found business opportunities. One of them is a company he founded called Frame Your Game, which sells license plate frames that look like baseball caps and football helmets.

"I was always looking to when the game ended," he told me in a phone interview recently. "I always wanted to be prepared."

Smart words from a smart player.

               

7. The AAF continues to make waves

The Alliance of American Football may sound like something out of Star Wars, but the spring league set to start play in February of 2019 is off to one of the fastest (and smartest) starts of any football expansion league we've seen.

Not only has the league moved fast with announcing locations, but it has also made highly credible head coaching hires: Steve Spurrier in Orlando, Rick Neuheisel in Phoenix, Dennis Erickson in Salt Lake City, Mike Singletary in Memphis and Brad Childress in Atlanta (where Mike Vick is also the offensive coordinator). 

That is a pretty solid lineup of cities and coaches. 

It doesn't mean the league will succeed, but the more moves it makes, the more it seems the AAF might have a nice future.

              

8. What drives Aaron Rodgers?

The answer Aaron Rodgers gives when asked what drives him despite accomplishing so much is wonderful and typical Rodgers. It's worth a listen.

Great response from @AaronRodgers12 to @PCBrettC's question of what continues to drive him after all he's accomplished in the NFL. pic.twitter.com/Um0j8gW3xv

— Aaron Nagler (@AaronNagler) May 15, 2018

"It's sustained greatness, I think, is what drives me," Rodgers said recently at the Wisconsin High School Sports Awards. "It's to be the best and to be able to choose when I'm done playing.

"I think as you've seen here recently with Jordy [Nelson], but even you go back a few years to whether it's Julius Peppers or A.J. Hawk or John Kuhn or Brett Favre, the fairy tale ending of starting a career and ending it with the same organization rarely happens. So that's kind of my goal, is to be able to be indispensable to this organization into my 40s to where you've got to keep me around."

Rodgers is 34. He'll sign a huge multiyear contract extension soon, and he'll be worth every penny. Don't ever doubt him.

          

9. All smiles

I just wanted to highlight a photo of Tiger Woods, future Hall of Famer Larry Fitzgerald and longtime NFL player Reggie Bush at an event for Woods' charity.

Thank you @LarryFitzgerald, @ReggieBush and all of the guests who came out to #TigerJam to support @TGRFound this weekend! pic.twitter.com/YGkNCoTePa

— Tiger Woods (@TigerWoods) May 20, 2018

It's just a cool picture. That's all.

Moving along, now.

                

10. An inspiration

If you want to see the positive impact NFL players can have on people, look no further than Philadelphia's Zach Ertz.

Congratulations and thank you, @JasonWitten! pic.twitter.com/mnX4EEKCuM

— Zach Ertz (@ZERTZ_86) May 5, 2018

Jason Witten is retiring from football, but many years ago, he inspired a young Ertz to study the position. Ertz did, and now he is one of the best tight ends in football and one of the heirs to men like Witten.

It's a story we've seen before, and it never gets old.

   

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are the No. 2 betting favorite behind the Calgary Stampeders to win the Grey Cup in the 2018 CFL season.

According to OddsShark, the Tiger-Cats have 11-2 odds of capturing their ninth Grey Cup. The Stampeders, who lost in the 2017 Grey Cup final to the Toronto Argonauts, have 11-5 odds.

Hamilton will be hoping 2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel can make a big splash in his first season north of the border. He announced Saturday he formally signed his contract with the Ticats. Manziel hasn't played competitive football since Week 16 of the 2015 NFL regular season.

The Ticats are coming off their second straight losing season and missed out on the playoffs for the first time since 2012. Jeremiah Masoli returns as the team's starting quarterback, having thrown for 3,177 yards, 15 touchdowns and five interceptions in 2017.

It's the Tuesday edition of The Simms & Lefkoe Podcast!

Julio Jones wants a new deal, Johnny Manziel is headed to Canada, and Odell Beckham is back in at Giants OTAs.

Follow us @SimmsAndLefkoe on Twitter and Instagram to tell us what you think of the show!

         

Warning: contains NSFW language.

To subscribe to the show on iTunes, click here.

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Washington rookie running back Derrius Guice and Denver Broncos rookie defensive end Bradley Chubb told TMZ Sports they were supporting Johnny Manziel as he attempts to revitalize his NFL career by playing in the Canadian Football League.

"Everybody goes through things in life, this is just one of those things he had to overcome and he's done a great job overcoming it," Guice said. 

"He's a great player, great dude," Chubb added. "I hope he does well."

Manziel signed a two-year contract with the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats over the weekend.

Johnny Manziel has found a team willing to take a chance on him, as the troubled quarterback signed a deal with the CFL's Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Saturday. 

"Made the decision today to sign my contract with the CFL and further my football career after a long break," Manziel wrote on Twitter. "Very grateful for everyone that's been supporting me along the way. I believe this is the best opportunity for me moving forward and I'm eager for what the future holds."

Manziel discussed his decision in a video for Barstool Sports: 

https://twitter.com/barstoolsports/status/997848650809131008

Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports reported the structure of Manziel's contract:

Manziel's CFL contract: $122k base, $10k sign bonus, $18k housing stipend, $10k if active 6 games, $10k for 10 games active. $10k for 14 games active. Another $120k if plays half of snaps. March 1 $75k offseason bonus. 2018 $202k base w/same incentives

— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) May 19, 2018

Manziel has fallen on hard times since the Cleveland Browns made him the 22nd overall pick in 2014. He was fined $12,000 during his first preseason game after giving the middle finger to Washington's bench. 

His off-field exploits, though, made more headlines than anything he did on the field, starting with entering a rehab treatment center in February 2015.

Manziel was also involved in an alleged domestic dispute with his ex-girlfriend in January 2016. The charge was dropped in November 2017 after he agreed to complete an anger management course as part of a dismissal agreement.

The NFL announced in June 2016 that Manziel would be suspended for four games for violating the league's substance-abuse policy. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport noted Manziel could still face additional punishment related to his domestic dispute under the NFL's personal conduct policy if he returns. 

SportsCenter noted how bad Manziel was whenever he featured for the Browns:

Johnny Manziel started 8 games since being drafted in '14 1st round.
• 2-6 record
• 1,675 Pass yds
• 7 TD
• 7 Int pic.twitter.com/gjrweLgtoa

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 11, 2016

Manziel possesses talent, which made him an attractive option despite his long period away from the sport. He's not a traditional dropback passer, but there were brief moments during his two seasons with the Browns when he showed ability.

Manziel is still working his way back into the good graces of NFL teams, so the opportunity to join a CFL squad makes all the sense in the world.

The Tiger-Cats worked out Manziel last August. At the time, TSN.ca's Farhan Lalji and Dave Naylor reported the team wasn't comfortable with his desire to play football and that he wasn't "ready to put his troubled past behind him."

Hamilton made Manziel a two-year contract offer Jan. 7 to keep him on its negotiation list while it tried to work out a deal.

A few years removed from his most recent professional football game, Manziel is an enigma. He's a dynamic talent who could help the Tiger-Cats win when he's focused. It's up to him to prove he wants to be that kind of player.

Johnny Manziel's desire to back up Tom Brady looks like it will go unfulfilled.

Mike Reiss of ESPN reported the Patriots' drafting of LSU's Danny Etling "effectively ends" their exploration of adding Manziel, who is attempting to make an NFL comeback. The Patriots were among the teams at a pro day Manziel held at the University of San Diego.

Manziel previously told TMZ Sports he would join the Patriots "in a heartbeat." The 25-year-old has not played in either of the last two NFL seasons since being released by the Cleveland Browns due to a lack of productivity on the field and myriad off-field issues.

Manziel has been to rehab for substance addiction and reached a plea deal on a domestic assault charge in 2016. He said in an interview earlier this year that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was checked into a hospital last week after a poor reaction to medication.

"Thank you for your concern and kind messages," Manziel said on Instagram. "Unfortunately I had a reaction to an increased dosage in Lithium which I take for my Bipolar disorder. It was a scary moment and I'm especially grateful for the staff at the hospital and all that they've done in the last 24 hours."

The Patriots already have Brian Hoyer and Etling on the roster, making it unlikely they sign Manziel—even for a training camp tryout. The ultimate distraction his signing would cause doesn't seem like a prudent move given there is almost no shot he would make the roster. 

Former NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel said he was hospitalized Monday after having an adverse reaction to a medication, per Sports Illustrated:

Johnny Manziel releases a statement on his hospitalization: pic.twitter.com/UMuRqjrKSh

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) May 8, 2018

TMZ Sports initially reported the news he was admitted to a hospital in Humble, Texas. 

"It seems like he had a reaction to an adjustment in his prescription," a Manziel representative, Denise Michaels, told TMZ. "He's fine and headed home."

Manziel, 25, was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the first round of the 2014 NFL draft but was out of the league after just two seasons with the team as poor play and off-field concerns ultimately cut his career short.

He was also arrested for domestic violence in 2016, though he agreed to undergo a counseling program in exchange for having the charges dropped.

He's been attempting a comeback, however, throwing at the San Diego and Texas A&M Pro Days. He has participated in the Spring League, a camp for NFL hopefuls to show off their skills and attract the attention of scouts and coaches. 

He has also taken steps to improve his life off the field, quitting drinking and partying. In an interview, Manziel said he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and has gone on medication to treat it, though it's unclear if that medication caused the reaction that led to his hospitalization.  

"I am taking medication for bipolar, and I am working to try to make sure I don't fall back into any type of depression, because I know where that leads me and I know how slippery a slope that is for me,” he told Good Morning America in February (h/t Jaclyn Hendricks of the New York Post). "At the end of the day, I can't help that my wires are a little bit differently crossed than yours. I can't help my mental makeup or the way that I was created."

The domestic violence case against former NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel was closed after he completed the terms of his plea deal, and the Dallas Police Department released files related to the case Thursday, including photos of Colleen Crowley. 

TMZ Sports shared a gallery of the photos from the 2016 incident, and there were visible marks and bruises on her back, leg and neck and collarbone areas, among others.

Manziel was ultimately indicted for misdemeanor assault on his ex-girlfriend and completed an anger management course as part of his plea deal.

TMZ recapped the night of Jan. 29, 2016, when the incident occurred, noting Crowley told police Manziel threw her on the bed at a hotel room and then followed her when she said she was leaving. She said he then threw her to the ground, forced her back into a car when she tried to get out and then ruptured her eardrum by striking her face.

He eventually ran away when Crowley grabbed a knife in self-defense and a neighbor called 911.

The Cleveland Browns ultimately released Manziel in March 2016. He was also far from impressive on the field.

He played just 14 games in 2014 and 2015 after Cleveland selected him with a first-round pick and finished with seven touchdown throws and seven interceptions, failing to consistently demonstrate the talent that won him a Heisman Trophy at Texas A&M.

Manziel has since played multiple games in the Spring League and said he would join the Canadian Football League if he didn't land a spot on an NFL roster heading into the 2018 campaign.