Johnny Manziel answers if he would ever get into coaching college football

During his time at Texas A&M, Johnny Manziel regularly kept coaches up at night — including his own.

The controversial former Heisman Trophy winner, whose once-promising football career was derailed by public struggles with substance abuse and mental health issues, has recently returned to the public eye following this year’s release of Netflix’s Untold: Johnny Football.

That includes a recent appearance on the Throwbacks podcast with former USC quarterback Matt Leinart and actor Jerry Ferrara of Entourage fame, where he was asked about a potential future in coaching.

And while the thought has certainly crossed his mind on occassion, coaching doesn’t appear to be in Manziel’s future any time soon, thanks in large part to advice from one of his former coaches.

“I don’t know, man. The college aspect, I think, would be fun, but then the recruiting trail and hitting that and doing that is like …,” Manziel said on this week’s Throwbacks podcast. “I talk to Kliff Kingsbury a lot, and I’ve brought it up to him a couple of times, and he’s like, ‘Bro, enjoy f***ing time. … Enjoy your life.’ I could see him when he was at Texas Tech, he was just like, ‘this is a real grind.’ … It’s a different world.”

Kingsbury was Manziel’s offensive coordinator at Texas A&M during his Heisman Trophy-winning redshirt freshman season before a six-year stint as Texas Tech’s head coach (2013-18). Kingsbury is currently in his first season as the Washington Commanders‘ offensive coordinator after spending a year as an offensive analyst at USC following his 2022 firing as the Arizona Cardinals‘ head coach.

Johnny Manziel may have stayed longer at Texas A&M with NIL

Can you imagine Johnny Manziel in the NIL era of college football? Manziel himself can and he probably would’ve stayed in the college game a little bit longer.

“Yeah, I think so, just because, I mean, you know, you get into your rookie contract if you’re not taken  high enough, I mean, you know, I could have stayed two more years in college and probably made what I made throughout the four years of your NFL deal for the most part,” Manziel said. “So I think it would have given me the opportunity to still be at a place today and then like that, be able to make money and be able to, you know, still continue to go play the college football life. It’s tough for me looking back, having left two years of eligibility on a table.”

Nick Kosko contributed to this report.