Asked if he took off the day from school to attend the Pro Day, the thirteen-year-old replied, “Teachers all know why. It’s Texas.”
Eight NFL head coaches and general managers came to A&M to see Johnny Manziel work out, as did former President (H.W.) Bush and his wife, Barbara—and their dogs, along with Secret Service agents. The Bushes arrived in a golf cart driven by one of the Aggie recruiting staffers. Manziel arrived as his pal Drake’s music blared throughout the complex as a crowd of about five hundred watched from the perimeter. Decked out in camouflage shorts, a black Nike jersey with his white Number 2 (the Aggies are outfitted by Adidas), Manziel provided another wrinkle from the Pro Day norm by wearing shoulder pads and a matte black A&M helmet.
“You play the game in shoulder pads on Sundays,” he explained. “Why not come out and do it?… For me, it was a no-brainer.”
Whitfield later said the idea stemmed from a conversation he and Manziel had prior to the Combine. Manziel had asked Whitfield, “What do NFL personnel people respect?”
“People respect a challenge,” Whitfield said.
“So, what more can we do?” Manziel asked.
“Make it more like an interview. If you’re going to Wall Street, you wouldn’t wear a T-shirt and shorts. You’d put a suit on.”
The helmet and pads were Manziel’s business suit. His performance on the field was sharp, too, completing 62 of 65 scripted passes. Two of the incompletions came on balls that hit receivers’ hands, while Mike Evans actually caught the other incompletion, but he was out of bounds. On several occasions Whitfield chased after Manziel with his broom as the QB deftly evaded. Several scouts admitted they were wowed seeing Manziel’s ability to use his entire body like a whip to generate power while throwing the ball on the move.
“Most quarterbacks struggle throwing the ball down the field when rolling to their weak side, but Manziel didn’t show any issues throwing the ball on the run to his left,” said NFL.com’s Bucky Brooks, a former scout for the Seattle Seahawks and Carolina Panthers. “In fact, he repeatedly delivered gorgeous teardrops on vertical throws following improvised scrambles or redirections from the pocket. This is clearly one of the strengths of his game, and his quarterback coach [Whitfield] made it a point to highlight it throughout the workout.”
One NFL assistant noted only one flaw—that sometimes Manziel threw a flat-line, low-trajectory ball on intermediate routes over the middle. In all, he threw 49 of the 64 passes he attempted from within the pocket, with the other 15 coming via rollouts and simulated escapes—with Whitfield’s script showing a level of emphasis on the kinds of throws many were skeptical Manziel was comfortable making. Manziel threw 21 passes off a three-step drop, 18 off a five-step drop or play-action, and 10 from a seven-step drop. He concluded the workout with a long completion to Evans and yelled “Boom!” drawing applause from the crowd in attendance.
Manziel’s workout left many, including Kurt Warner, raving.
“Most guys can make the short throws,” Warner said. “Most guys can make the intermediate throws. How do you make those deeper throws? Do you throw them the right way, and that’s the thing that impresses me—he threw the ball the right way. I don’t care if you just get a completion; I want to see it thrown the right way. His deep balls, great touch, great trajectory. The deep plays he made on the run, and I know how difficult that is to keep your body balanced while you’re running away from something and being able to put the ball 45 yards downfield on the money. Those things don’t happen every day. Twenty of the [NFL’s] starting quarterbacks can’t do those things. He was doing something consistently that not very many guys do. I was very impressed.”
Ron Jaworski, who a month earlier said he wouldn’t draft Manziel in the first three rounds, called the workout “magnificent,” saying he saw tremendous improvement in the QB’s mechanics.
Whitfield was probably the most relieved guy at A&M that day. After all, his star pupil wasn’t the only one in front of the football world; he himself, the “QB Whisperer” from Dime City, was, too.
“We took a lot of time trying to lay out that script,” Whitfield told a group of reporters. “Every throw in that deal is part of NFL offenses and concepts—from the footwork to the reads to the eyes. The thing he’s been challenged so much about is, what people aren’t really willing to give him is, he can be a systematic player. Everybody thinks he has to work off script and he’s a jazz artist. He can read sheet music. We tried to iron out some Mozart out here, and, hopefully, people’s ears caught it.”
WEEKS LATER, CHIP KELLY described Manziel’s decision to wear the helmet and shoulder pads as “interesting.”
“I know one thing he did it for,” the coach said. “It makes him look bigger. I was surprised that no one ever said that. I thought it was a really smart idea, and, along with that, it makes a ton of sense, since he’s also going to throw in pads.”
Kelly, the former Oregon coach to whom Manziel was once committed, probably attended more Pro Days in 2014 than any other head coach in the NFL. Given how the NFL coaching calendar is set up by the league, where staffs aren’t allowed to do anything with their players for months after the season, Chip Kelly was surprised more head coaches weren’t on the Pro Day circuit.
“I don’t know what everyone else does,” he said. “What are you doing in your office? We had January and February to do all our self-scout stuff, and Pro Days aren’t till the middle of March. I just want to know more about the guy. You can look at the film, and you see the athletic part, but you want to see the mental part. The physical differences in this league aren’t very different, but the intangibles and the intelligence are the difference, I think. That’s why one guy makes it and one guy doesn’t.”
At the collegiate level, Kelly demonstrated his keen acumen for evaluating talent, especially quarterbacks. His was the first major program to go all-in for Manziel, and that same year, his Ducks also were ahead of the curve on Hawaiian Marcus Mariota, even though he’d yet to start a game as a quarterback. In his debut season in the NFL, Kelly was a big believer in Nick Foles, an unproven second-year quarterback.
“I’d seen Nick at Oregon,” Kelly said. “I don’t think people realize how big Nick is. He’s 6′6″, 240 pounds, and he’s athletic for that size. The biggest thing I marveled at when I coached against him was how tough he was. We hit the crap out of him, and he just kept getting up and making plays. Didn’t matter what was going on. You never felt like they were gonna be out of the game with him throwing the ball.”
The New Hampshire native said he doesn’t buy that there is any one specific quality that predicts greatness at the position, other than saying the intangibles are huge. “I don’t know how to quantify it. I think it’s what separates good from great. Trent [Dilfer] sees it, since he’s going to Elite 11 and knows that guy’s pretty throwing the ball, but it’s going from routes-on-air to one-on-ones to 7-on-7 to 11-on-11 to making it live. And that list of quarterbacks starts to shrink, and it comes down to the intangibles. It’s like art. It’s tough to describe why it’s a great painting, but you just know it when you see it. That’s why their paintings are worth millions of dollars and why others are sold on a street corner.
“It’s so tough to really quantify exactly what sets apart Tom Brady, who was a sixth-round draft pick and became a Hall of Famer, from other guys who were top-five picks and they don’t make it. There’s not a hard and fast way to subjectively say, ‘He has to be this or have this.’ It’s the one position in the NFL where the height and weight range drastically. If you’re an offensive lineman and you’re not over six-foot, you’re not playing in the NFL. I don’t care how many intangibles you have. But the quarterback position has the biggest range of physical characteristics. And it’s the most important position in the NFL, and it’s all over the map as to what can win. That’s what makes it so interesting. How do you predict the success of Russell Wilson compared to Ryan Leaf?”
As much as Merril Hoge and many
TV draft analysts harped on their doubts about whether Manziel could handle playing the game from inside the pocket at the National Football League level, veteran personnel actually sounded more concerned about whether Johnny Football could cope with life off the field, and some of those extended beyond him being just some boozing Alpha Bro.
“Manziel’s greatest strength is that he truly believes that he is unstoppable and that he can find his way out of anything,” said one NFL scout. “But his greatest weakness—and the thing that scares the shit out of people—is also that he truly believes that he is unstoppable and that he can find his way out of anything. All the drinking or even if he’s smoking pot wouldn’t scare me. It’s the kid’s total reckless personality and God knows what else that’ll lead to. Nothing with that kid would surprise me.”
The football world, in its zeal to fit Johnny Manziel in a box and find an apt comparison, kicked into overdrive after the Combine. To some, he was like Brett Favre. To others, he was Fran Tarkenton or Doug Flutie or Jeff Garcia or Russell Wilson, who one NFL coach was convinced that Johnny definitely was not. People met Russell Wilson and got blown away by his maturity. He was first-guy-in, last-guy-out. Manziel, according to some scouts, was the opposite.
“Russell had a really good understanding of what he is and what he’s about,” said the coach. “That’s the million-dollar question with Johnny: What is he gonna be like? Are the outside distractions and the other things gonna be an issue? That’s not a question with Russell.”
Aside from being unconventional quarterbacks, the one thing Favre, Tarkenton, Flutie, Garcia, and Wilson had in common: none were drafted in the first round.
Manziel’s habits—on-field and off—left many NFL personnel people with scrunched-up faces, pondering exactly what they would be investing in. “There was so much stuff that you had to sort through it,” said one NFL coach. “You had to find out about the kid, because—for a lack of a better term—there is his celebrity lifestyle. Is he gonna be the first guy in, last guy to leave, because in this league, at that position, you need a guy to be like that. It was pretty fair to research that, because there were some [red] flags. We were comfortable with him. Football is important to him, but even so, you really never know. What somewhat concerns you is that football has come pretty easy to him in his life, but no matter who you are, football is not easy in this league.
“I think that Johnny’s a better passer than Vince Young, but Vince was one of the best college football players who’s ever played. He just tried to play in the NFL on raw ability, and that only gets you so far. The league always catches up with you, no matter who you are.”
The same coach had a much less favorable opinion of other highly regarded QBs in the draft class. He was enamored with Derek Carr’s ability to throw the ball but was troubled by how the Fresno State QB played his worst when pressured or when facing the stiffest competition. Alabama’s AJ McCarron, who had led the Crimson Tide to two national titles, set off red flags in his meetings with teams.
“He was very quick to blame other people,” said one NFL QB coach. “He was very sensitive and defensive.” The assistant also said that that attitude, which he saw as a potential locker-room headache, was reflected by some comments McCarron published on his Twitter feed.
The reaction to Whitfield’s other client in the draft, Virginia Tech’s Logan Thomas, was even harsher: “I just don’t think he’s a quarterback,” said the coach. “He’s big and a great athlete, and he can throw the hell out of the ball, but he’s so inconsistent and inaccurate on film. I don’t think he’s good enough to play. Can you really improve his accuracy? That’s the hardest thing to fix. Deep down, I don’t think you can. And it takes him a while to make decisions. He has a tendency to hold the ball, even at the Senior Bowl. You can be a smart guy, but if your mind doesn’t work fast on the field, then that’s something that’s hard to fix.”
As biting as some of those comments and rumors could be, the most eye-catching quote of all in the 2014 draft cycle came in a pair of tweets from Bleacher Report’s NFL Draft analyst Matt Miller:
“I present you with the greatest QB comparison ever. An AFC North coach compared Bridgewater to … Willie Beaman. I’m not making this up.
“Said coach re: Bridgewater, “He’s a dynamic playmaker, but is he the guy you want running your offense? They’re very similar.”
Don’t recall watching Beaman play in the NFL? Well, that’s because he doesn’t actually exist. Never did outside of a 1999 film directed by Oliver Stone that centered around the fictitious Miami Sharks of the Associated Football Franchises of America. Beaman is a third-string QB-turned-star played by Jamie Foxx. The Beaman comparison—as bizarre as it was—was just one of a host of comments touting Bridgewater’s seemingly plummeting stock.
Two weeks before the draft, Mayock dropped Bridgewater from being his number one ranked QB to number five. “What I’m hearing is two things,” Mayock said on NFL Network. “Number one, when we saw him throw live, we didn’t see arm strength and didn’t see accuracy. Number two, when you draft a quarterback in the first round, you expect him to be the face of your franchise; you expect him to embrace the moment. I think people had some concerns about whether or not this young man is ready to step up and be the face of a franchise.”
Matt Richner believed that Mayock had it all wrong. The thirty-two-year-old Richner saw Bridgewater as the top QB prospect in the draft class and the only one worthy of a first-round grade. Richner ranked Johnny Manziel fourth, behind Georgia’s Aaron Murray and Alabama’s AJ McCarron. He gave Blake Bortles a fifth-round grade.
Like many around the game fishing for an apt metric or barometer, Richner was hoping to leave his fingerprints on some next-level insight into football, much like the Moneyball and sabermetrics crowd did with baseball and, to a lesser degree, in basketball. Richner is an analyst for the website PredictionMachine.com. According to his bio on the site, he also has produced statistical draft reports for six NFL teams, but he said a confidentiality clause prohibited him from saying which ones he worked for, adding that he was paid only “a few thousand dollars.” His day job was as a financial analyst in Seattle for a 3-D printing company.
Richner worked as an intern for the Seattle Seahawks during the 2008–09 season, not in the scouting department, but rather in PR. He never played football. At 5′8″, 130 pounds, he said he wasn’t built for the game. Instead, he played soccer, but he always loved football. His love for stats took root when he was nine. His parents gave him the Sports Illustrated Almanac as one of his Christmas presents.
When Richner joined the Seahawks, one of his assignments was to help clean up their basement, as the franchise’s offices were being moved to a different suburb twenty miles away. Richner was gathering up old scouting reports and draft reports from the ’90s for the garbage. He couldn’t help but read some of them.
“I just kept looking through it, thinking, ‘Man, this is such arbitrary stuff: ‘high motor’…‘violent hands’…‘Gets up for big games.’ How do you quantify that?’ ” Richner said. He broke down old play-by-play recaps of games to gather his data. He did a large portion of his Master’s thesis on how to use the stats he compiled to help filter out future draft busts. He offered his findings to the Seahawks personnel people and to Mike Holmgren’s coaching staff.
“I can show you why Ryan Leaf and Kyle Boller were draft busts,” Richner told them. He had ID-ed ways to use certain stats to show what a guy is and what he isn’t. And, since much of it was based on situational football, which is part of every coach’s DNA, it gave the Seattle staff something to think about. Gil Haskell, the Seahawks’ offensive coordinator, became a believer in Richner. “He’s really good,” said Haskell, who was in his late sixties when he met Richner. “His way of looking at the game is completely different. I would hire him tomorrow in my scouting department. I tried to get (NFL head coaches) Andy Reid and Mike McCoy to hire him.”
It took Richner ninety minutes to
catalog his play-by-play stats for one season of a college QB, he said. One of the metrics Richner emphasized was a quarterback’s completion percentage on third downs.
Richner cited onetime five-star recruit Jimmy Clausen, the QB Steve Clarkson once compared to LeBron James, as a testament to his metrics. The Carolina Panthers used a second-round pick on the former Notre Dame quarterback in 2010. Richner had pegged Clausen as undraftable. His teams at Notre Dame didn’t win many games. On the surface, Clausen’s numbers in his final season at ND—a 68 percent completion mark and a 28–4 touchdown-to-interception ratio—were sterling, but upon closer scrutiny Richner noted just how much the QB struggled in clutch situations. He completed 74 percent of his passes on first down, 69 percent on second down, but just 52 percent on third down—a staggering drop for a guy supposed to be a top prospect.
“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.
The QB The Making of Modern Quarterbacks Page 32
