Former NFL quarterback Johnny Manziel recently made an appearance on Shannon Sharpe's increasingly popular "Club Shay Shay" podcast and managed to drop so many notable nuggets, the sit down may have left a much more lasting mark than his entire NFL highlight reel. The latest person in the assembly line of those taking shots across the dome from Manziel's unfiltered candor is 15-year veteran quarterback and former Browns teammate, Brian Hoyer.
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Here's what Manziel had to say about the still-active Hoyer, who has — by all accounts, including from Tom Brady — been a well-liked, highly respected teammate.
I didn’t have QB Brian Hoyer being an absolutel dbag on my bingo card this morning.
JOHNNY MANZIEL with ShayShay⬇️
🎥: @ClubShayShay | #Browns #NFL pic.twitter.com/CvEgY3MwqA— 49ers & NFL News 24/7 (@49ersSportsTalk) February 22, 2024
"Brian Hoyer had been waiting on an opportunity to be able 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," Manziel explained to Sharpe. "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, right? Let's just cut that off.' And I don't have a bad word to say about Brian Hoyer. That is just fact of happened in that room."
Manziel went on to say that Sharpe could go ask former Browns quarterback Connor Shaw or Dowell Loggains — Cleveland's QB coach during Johnny Football's rookie season — "how Brian Hoyer was in that room."
As they say whenever there's a Trump news dump, there's a lot to unpack here. But back in August, Manziel himself openly admitted to basically watching "zero" game film during the disastrous two-year span with the Browns.
Johnny Manziel was given a team iPad where coaches could secretly track the amount of time he spent watching film.
But the problem was that Manziel didn’t watch any film. Literally not a minute.https://t.co/ydbOVnybo0
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) August 9, 2023
That's precisely the type of thing that a savvy veteran like Hoyer, or really anyone sitting in an NFL quarterback room, would pick up on — and do so rather quickly. It probably took all of two weeks in training camp for Hoyer to learn what the "rookie phenom" was doing in order to get prepared and learn the playbook.
So it comes as zero surprise that the guy sitting at the head of the table in the quarterback room would become extremely frustrated to have to keep repeating plays and coverages for a flashy rookie that was doing just about everything off the field except for the one thing he was supposed to be doing.
We're guessing it also didn't help matters when you take into account the media circus Manziel brought right along with him. Hoyer admitted as much in 2018.
This might’ve been payback for Hoyer being relegated to chariot driver for Manziel in this epic New York Times illustration. https://t.co/Aza8mhyRqF pic.twitter.com/Ub806e9CIU
— Greg Rajan (@GregRajan) February 22, 2024
Yes, it's a safe bet that seeing things like the above "New York Times" sketch of the presumed cape-clad savior in Manziel towering over a much smaller Hoyer, miserably manning the king's chariot, didn't exactly help the temperature of this now-famous Cleveland Browns quarterbacks room. Because that's really just a small snippet of the type of attention the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner was getting from local and national media.
Not all of this coming out in such detail is necessarily bad for anyone, though, including Johnny Manziel. This viral appearance on "Club Shay Shay" has really ended up serving as a verbal tell-all with a heaping dose of refreshing self-awareness — including a heartfelt apology to LeBron James — that greatly assisted in explaining why his NFL career flamed out so quickly, lasting just two dreadful seasons.
