A former New England Patriots quarterback might be partly responsible for deflating Johnny Football.
The football is abuzz over Johnny Manziel's appearance on Shannon Sharpe's web series "Club Shay Shay" as the infamous NFL Draft washout offered a behind-the-scenes look at his brief, tumultuous professional career primarily spent with the Cleveland Browns.
While Manziel was mostly apologetic for his erratic behavior (notably apologizing to his idol LeBron James for ignoring his reaching out to help), he partly blamed fellow Cleveland passer Brian Hoyer for the derailment of his Browns career and their stormy relationship.
“Go ask (former Browns QB) Connor Shaw, who played at South Carolina and was with us in Cleveland. Go ask him how Brian Hoyer was in that room. Go ask (former Browns QBs coach) Dowell Loggains how he was in that room," Manziel told Sharpe. "It’s OK, but at that point in time where I was and I’m the franchise guy, I could have used a little help."
Hoyer has been an NFL sideline staple since 2009 and is currently stationed on the Las Vegas Raiders' roster. The Michigan State alum has most commonly resided with the Patriots, spending three separate stints (2009-11, 2017-18, 2020-22) as a reliable backup to Tom Brady and his successors.
Hoyer had come to Cleveland in 2013 and was originally set to backup Brandon Weeden. He effectively took the job from the prior attempt at an orange-helmeted franchise quarterback with a pair of victorious starts but a torn ACL prematurely ended his season. When Manziel arrived in the following year's draft, he found that Hoyer wasn't going to give a rare chance at headlining duties away without a fight.
Manziel almost understood where Hoyer was coming from but had his own career to think about. The alleged welcome, or lack thereof, got his professional journey off to a sour start.
“My quarterback room was not a home for me because of Brian Hoyer,” Manziel said. “Brian Hoyer had been waiting on an opportunity to go really provide for his family, get an opportunity and he saw how much of an upper hand he had on me, and he didn’t hold back when it came to that.
"There were instances in the quarterback room early on where I would ask the same question a couple of times and he’d be at the head of the table and go, ‘Pfft, again? We’re doing this again? Keep him out of it. Cut that off.’ I don’t have a bad word to say about Brian Hoyer. That is just (the) fact of what happened in that room.”
Hoyer wound up holding off Manziel for the Browns' starting spot at the onset of the 2014 campaign and posted a 90.4 passer rating next to a 6-3 record over the first nine games. Those tallies respectively plummeted to 50.4 and 1-3 over the next four, leading the Browns to begin the Manziel era. Plagued by inconsistency, issues in his personal life, and a deteriorating work ethic, the Heisman winner went on to make only eight starts in the NFL and was later forced to turn the CFL, AAF, and FCF circuits to finish his football endeavors. Hoyer wound up leaving Cleveland and nomadically traveled to Houston, Chicago, and San Francisco before making his way back to Foxborough.
While Manziel has tried to accept responsibility for what went wrong in the ensuing years, he seems to can't help but think things might've turned out a bit differently if Hoyer had been a bit more welcoming.
"When you have that going on in the quarterback room, then I just do this, I ain't speaking, Manziel said. "If I question something, I'm not asking. I'm embarrassed. I'm getting dogged by a guy who's supposed to be my teammate."
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