“If you would give me the mulligan, the mulligan would have had to come right after I got drafted,” he said. “I see successful guys in the NFL, and what they do in the offseason, and the time that they put in, that makes them good players. Yes, they’re athletically gifted, but guys are good in the NFL because they know film, they study hard, and they work even harder in the offseason. I didn’t know that.
“And I feel like … if Cleveland did any of their homework, they would have known that I was a guy that didn’t come in every day and watch film, I was a guy that didn’t really know the Xs and Os of football. I played in a spread offense. We looked at bubbles, we looked at flats, we had progression reads across the field; it wasn’t like it was a super-intricate pro system. So when I get to Cleveland, there’s a quarterback in the room with me that’s not helping me [presumably Brian Hoyer, who started 13 games that season]. And it’s not really his job to, but nobody was there really helping me go over the Xs and Os and it was hard. I struggled.
“And then getting on the practice field, I lost a lot of confidence after my first couple days there. This was the first time in my life, at least (since) my freshman year of high school, that I wasn’t playing really well, that I didn’t come out the first day and throw the ball around and make a lot of completions and score touchdowns and everything – I struggled.
“And from there, that’s when the depression started to come, that’s when some things mental health-wise started to really change what was going on in my life, but I would go back to after the draft and getting with someone, or putting in extra time, or whatever it was, to make sure that I really, genuinely understood what was going on. There was a lot of winging it and not a lot of knowing exactly what I was doing because it was a hard transition for me. I didn’t know everything.
“The next year, when I got with Josh McCown, that guy was like, ‘listen: if you want to, you can come with me everyday. You can get here when I get here, you can leave when I leave, if you want to be good, just follow what I’m doing. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and there’s a reason that I’m still in the league this long down the road.’ Me and him got along great.”
Patrick interjected, “He’s a good dude. He really is,” speaking of McCown.
“He’s awesome,” Manziel said enthusiastically. “He gave me a blueprint, and that’s something that I still have to this day: he gave me a nice blueprint of what it takes to be a solid pro, and I’m very thankful to Josh and all that he did for me in Cleveland.”
