From the moment the Cleveland Browns drafted Manziel, the plan has been to throttle the mania that is “Johnny Football.” Manziel said at the Browns rookie minicamp Saturday that he realizes nothing is going to be handed to him, and he needs to prove he belongs before he’ll become Cleveland’s starting quarterback.
“I’m a rookie,” Manziel said, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “I need to earn my place. I need to earn my keep. I don’t need to be treated based off what I did in the past because that doesn’t mean a thing at this level. I was completely OK with hearing that from everybody. I don’t want to come in and have anything handed to me that I don’t deserve.”
Manziel said his goal is to prove that teams made a huge mistake passing on him.
“I got passed up 21 times, so that says something,” Manziel said. “Getting passed up 21 times is never fun and obviously some of those teams weren’t going to take quarterbacks and we knew that going into it, but still, it’s even humbling to be the second quarterback off the board, so for them to come in and say that, I don’t think I need to be humbled. I realize where I’m at in this organization and what I need to be doing, and that’s all I’m really focused on.”
