The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks (43 page)

“The best thing Carolina did was draft Jimmy Clausen, because he was so terrible that they were able to get Cam Newton the next year,” Richner said.

The year Newton went number one overall, the guy many of the other draft analysts touted as the top QB, Missouri’s Blaine Gabbert, got a big red flag from Richner. The reason: In Gabbert’s final season at Mizzou, he completed 71 percent on first down, 68 percent on second down, but his accuracy plummeted to just 44 percent on third down. In his final two seasons, Gabbert also faced five ranked opponents and threw just 4 touchdowns and 6 interceptions in those games.

Richner red-flagged another first-rounder that year, Washington’s Jake Locker, who completed 55 percent on first down, 62 percent on second down, and just 51 percent on third down in his final season for the Huskies.

As Richner broke down the numbers for 2014, Blake Bortles reminded him a lot of Gabbert.

On first down, Bortles completed 71 percent of his passes, 75 percent on second down, and 54 percent on third down. Worse still, Bortles’s UCF team only played four ranked teams in the previous two seasons. In those games, he threw half of his eighteen career interceptions.

“Most of the elite quarterbacks who have been drafted in the last couple of years, (Andrew Luck, RGIII, and Russell Wilson) did not see this significant of a drop in their completion percentage on third down,” Richner wrote in his draft report on
PredictionMachine.com
. “Russell Wilson, in his lone season at Wisconsin, completed 71.7 percent on first down, 71.8 percent on second down, and 75.3 percent on third down. The great quarterbacks don’t have a significant drop in production, and none of them were anywhere close to having a 50 percent completion rate on third down.

“The inconsistent nature of Bortles’s play on third down and his careless decisions against tougher competition would make me worry about drafting him. While he has the frame and stature that most traditionalists are looking for, I believe he lacks the fundamental consistency needed to be a top-level quarterback in the NFL.”

Richner’s top-ranked QB, Teddy Bridgewater, completed 68 percent of his passes and had a 14-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio on third down. “He is everything you like,” Richner said.

Manziel, whom Richner had ranked fourth, was actually a shade behind Bridgewater on third-down percentage at 67.

“Johnny’s the enigma of this draft class,” Richner said. “He holds on to the ball too long, at over 3.5 seconds (per pass play). A good quarterback—the Peytons, the Bradys, the Rodgers—they get the ball off in about 2.5 seconds.

“After doing a lot of the research on it, I always thought it was kind of funny. We criticize all these running backs and wide receivers because they run 4.5 or 4.6, and people are like, ‘Oh, my God! They’re a tenth of a second too slow!’ But here’s Johnny Manziel, and he has to shave a full second off his decision making? I don’t see that happening.”

The ability to get rid of the ball quickly, which Richner defines as “Snap to Pass” or which UK-based metrics site ProFootballFocus calls “Time to Throw,” is a newer barometer Richner has begun incorporating since his days in Seattle. In the NFL in 2013, according to PFF, Denver’s Peyton Manning had the fastest average time to unload the ball, at 2.36 seconds. Andy Dalton was next at 2.43. Tom Brady was 2.46. For comparison’s sake in 2011, the year Tim Tebow was
the starting QB when the Broncos went to the playoffs, his average release time was 3.65 seconds, nearly half a second slower than the next-slowest passer, Michael Vick. That Tebow stat, after having observed his subsequent quick exit from the NFL, seems incandescent.

Then again, the risk of reading too much into the Snap to Pass stat is that among the quarterbacks who measured the slowest in the NFL for 2013 were the guys best known for their scrambling ability: Kaepernick (3.08), Newton (3.09), and Wilson (3.18), plus Foles (3.11), considered four of the best young QBs in football, with each having led their teams to the playoffs in 2013.

ONE OF THE TWO
teams that didn’t have any representative at Johnny Manziel’s Pro Day was the Cleveland Browns, the same franchise that had trotted out twenty different starting quarterbacks since 1999 and the same one that, according to ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio, outsourced a study of the quarterback position that cost $100,000.

The project began under former Browns’ president Joe Banner, but wasn’t actually completed till after he was let go by owner Jimmy Haslam in February. According to CBS and ESPN, the study concluded that the best quarterback prospect in the draft was Teddy Bridgewater. Cleveland had two picks in the first round, at number four and at number twenty-six.

About three weeks before the draft, the Browns’ brass—first-year general manager Ray Farmer, first-year head coach Mike Pettine, offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan, and quarterback coach Dowell Loggains, also in their first seasons—went to College Station. They met Manziel and his reps, Erik Burkhardt and Brad Beckworth, for dinner on a Friday night.

An 8:00 a.m. Saturday workout was scheduled so everyone could be home in time for Easter Sunday. Unfortunately, no receivers showed up to run routes. Mike Evans and Travis Labhart, the Aggies’ two most reliable targets, were actually out of town that weekend. Worse still, the Browns didn’t even have a football to throw until they were able to get one out of the back of someone’s car. Instead,
Manziel was stuck throwing to Burkhardt, Beckworth, and an old high school buddy.

Asked how the Browns workout went, one member of the Manziel inner circle described it as “a shitshow.”

“I guess it’s why the Browns are the Browns.”

MAY 8, 2014
.

Draft Day came with a wave of trade rumors, as had become the norm. Only the drama had been ratcheted up even more. The NFL had squeezed out two more weeks of hype by pushing the draft back to early May. Also, there were more buzz-worthy players in the mix. The 2013 NFL Draft had been unusually low-wattage, with the top two prospects being offensive linemen—one from the Mid-American Conference, Central Michigan’s Eric Fisher; the other, Texas A&M’s Luke Joeckel. The 2014 group had a charismatic, freakish talent in South Carolina defensive line prodigy Jadeveon Clowney—who was also polarizing, as questions surrounding his work ethic had been swirling for the past year—and three touted quarterbacks. The
Houston Chronicle
reported that the Houston Texans, who held the first pick, would either select Clowney or Manziel. Or they might trade the pick. Longtime
Chronicle
writer John McClain, who had the Texans taking Manziel with the first overall pick in his mock draft, was so sure Houston would take a quarterback in the first round that he said he would eat the front page of his newspaper if the Texans didn’t.

The 2014 draft would also feel bigger than ever, since a record thirty prospects had accepted the NFL’s invite to attend. Among them were Clowney, Bortles, and Bridgewater, and three Texas A&M Aggies: offensive tackle Jake Matthews, wide receiver Mike Evans, and Manziel.

Attending the NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall in New York City feels like equal parts game show and pro wrestling card with its hissing fans, clunky intros, and emotional families hanging on every move. Inside the greenroom, agents and business managers nervously kept checking their smartphones, hoping for any kind of intel.

Clowney was drafted first. Erik Burkhardt, Manziel’s agent, had told people in their inner circle that the Rams were poised to grab Manziel, but instead St. Louis took Auburn offensive lineman Greg Robinson second. Jacksonville, with a need for a QB, went third. Manziel had felt really good about his connection with Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley. The Jags did take a quarterback—Bortles. Cleveland was up next. The Browns were in the market for a quarterback, and the team’s brass really liked Redskins backup Kirk Cousins but were unable to land him. Instead of going for Manziel or Bridgewater, the Browns opted to trade the fourth pick to Buffalo, which took Clemson wide receiver Sammy Watkins. The Raiders—also rumored to be eyeing a QB—drafted Buffalo linebacker Khalil Mack. The next two picks were both Aggies, but it was Matthews and then Evans. When the Rams came back up with the thirteenth pick, Manziel thought he would be their guy. After all, he’d had arguably his best workout for them, and he knew they’d spent as much time researching him as any team had. But instead, they drafted defensive tackle Aaron Donald from Pittsburgh.

Dallas was coming up at number sixteen. Could his buddy Jerry Jones, the Cowboys’ fickle owner, resist picking Manziel, especially since his starter Tony Romo’s back ailments left his future in doubt? An hour earlier, as Manziel was sliding out of the top eight, it seemed as if Jones would’ve gnawed off one of his arms for the shot to bring Johnny Football to Cowboys Stadium. Then, when their pick came up and no other player in the greenroom reacted as the Cowboys’ allotted time ticked away, it gave the Manziel camp hope that it might be him. Instead, Dallas selected Notre Dame offensive lineman Zack Martin, who wasn’t in attendance.

“There’s just too much dynamic here for him, for the franchise, for everybody,” Jones later explained about bypassing Manziel. “That’s just too much for insurance, and it’s not the usual development guy behind an accomplished quarterback. He’s a celebrity. He’s Elvis Presley.”

Manziel had unofficially become the “free-fall” guy that every NFL draft seems to have, stuck in front of the cameras, while watching as everyone else giddily springs up from their seats and embraces
family and friends to escape the greenroom. Even the NFL’s official Twitter feed mocked Manziel after the Cowboys became the latest team to pass on him, tweeting: “#SadManziel???”

In the buildup for each pick, ESPN’s Jon Gruden stumped for Manziel, which only kept the spotlight on the QB even more. According to Deadspin, ESPN mentioned Manziel’s name a total of 113 times on its telecast of the first round, which was more than that of the top five draft picks combined. All Manziel could do was guzzle yet another bottle of water while trying not to look exasperated before the national TV audience.

“Even the best poker player wouldn’t have been able to play that off,” said Whitfield, who watched his protégé withstand one gut-punch after another from ten feet away in the greenroom. “I felt for him. Bortles’s going number three was a shot in the stomach, then the Browns traded out of the fourth spot and then up, taking a corner [Oklahoma State’s Justin Gilbert] at eight. Tampa ends up taking Mike [Evans], but that makes sense, and it’s his teammate, so he’s happy for him. But then Minnesota is up at nine, and they take a linebacker [UCLA’s Anthony Barr], and then there was Dallas.”

The NFL, mindful of the awkward dynamic of sitting on camera for hours waiting for your name to be called, had set up an alternate greenroom with no cameras allowed. NFL reps eventually asked Manziel if he’d be more comfortable in there waiting out the process, but he repeatedly declined. Then, when Manziel got up from his seat, a hovering TV producer radioed back to his booth, thinking Manziel was retreating to the “dark” greenroom to escape the camera’s glare.

“Hey, he’s just going to the bathroom,” Whitfield told the producer. Sooner or later all that water he’d been chugging had been bound to catch up to him.

Whitfield tried to spur some activity, texting Dowell Loggains, the Cleveland Browns’ thirty-three-year-old QB coach: “Let’s go!”

“Coach, I’m trying,” replied Loggains, who had built a relationship with Whitfield over the previous few years and had even tried to have the quarterback from his previous stop with the Tennessee Titans, Jake Locker, work with the private coach.

Then, Manziel sent his own text to Loggains: “I wish you guys would come get me. Hurry up and draft me so we can wreck this league together.”

Loggains forwarded the text to Mike Pettine and to Browns’ owner Jimmy Haslam, adding, “This guy wants to be here. He is texting us. He wants to be part of it.”

Loggains, days later, re-told Arkansas radio host Bo Mattingly that Haslam’s response was: “Pull the trigger. We’re trading up to get this guy.”

The Browns, set to pick at number twenty-six, traded a third-round pick for the chance to swap picks with the Philadelphia Eagles, slotted at number twenty-two, so Cleveland could slide in front of the Kansas City Chiefs as chants of “JAH-nee, CLEVE-land … JAH-nee, CLEVE-land” swirled around Radio City Music Hall. The move was made so they could select Manziel, who finally ended up hearing his name announced two hours and forty-three minutes into the draft. He walked across the Radio City stage to greet NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, saluting the cheering crowd with his two-handed, finger-rubbing gesture that most have come to know as the “cashin’ out” move. Manziel became the first sub-6′ quarterback selected in the first round (or even second round) by an NFL team in sixty-one seasons since 5′10″ Ted Marchibroda was taken number five by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1953.

The behind-the-scenes action by the Browns to draft Manziel was almost as compelling as the story ESPN reporter Sal Paolantonio told. Jimmy Haslam, according to Paolantonio, said, “I was out to dinner recently, and a homeless person out on the street looked up at me and said, ‘Draft Manziel.’ ”

Evidently, the homeless man or Manziel’s text message had more of an impact on the Browns’ draft decisions than did the $100,000 advanced-metrics study they had outsourced.

“This is a great day for me, something I’ve thought about since I was a kid, since I was twelve years old watching the NFL Draft, and I dreamed I would be in that room, on that stage, one day,” Manziel said near midnight. “My dream came true. For me, there is no disappointment.”

As for his home-state Dallas Cowboys passing on him, Manziel joked, “I don’t know if the world could have handled that, honestly.”

Johnny Manziel wasn’t the only prominent quarterback who had a prolonged wait in the greenroom. Teddy Bridgewater looked as if he might fall out of the first round, but Minnesota traded up to the number thirty-two pick to get him. “You know the thing I like the most about him? He wins,” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said of Bridgewater. “Everywhere he’s ever been, he wins. Starts as a freshman in high school, wins. Starts as a freshman in college and wins. This guy—he’s got something about him.”