Netflix's doc provides a complex look at Johnny Manziel
It’s been just over a decade since Johnny Manziel mania swept the nation. Johnny ‘F-ing’ Football was born amid a transcendent redshirt freshman season at Texas A&M in 2012, and Manziel remains one of the most beloved and cherished players in recent college football history.
After beating No. 1 Alabama and leading the Aggies to a 11-2 season in the school’s first year in the SEC, Manziel became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy. In a flash, a 19-year-old kid from Kerrville, Texas was suddenly more than just a star quarterback in college. In a sixth-month span, he went from a local news bulletin miss-pronouncing his name to a celebrity, partying with the likes of Drake, Kevin Durant, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Justin Bieber.
Netflix’s “Untold: Johnny Football doc, released Tuesday, is a peak behind the curtain on the rise and fall of the bad boy quarterback. There are some holes in the story, but we get more insight — and access — into Manziel than we’ve ever had previously.
Despite Manziel’s magic on the field, few knew the internal struggles he was battling. We got a glimpse of something amiss with Manziel in Wright Thompson feature back in 2013 — the only profile on the quarterback at the time.
But Netflix’s doc provided Manziel a platform to tell his story. On the demons he’s still fighting. On his rise from a rather unheralded recruit who scored 75 touchdowns one season at Kerville High to ‘Money Manziel’ and the most famous college athlete since Tim Tebow.
It’s true that his love for football was gone by the time he got to the NFL, but the ‘bust’ label he’ll carry for the rest of his life is far more complicated than that, as the doc reveals.
“I live with a lot of regret,” Manziel said at last year’s Texas A&M Hall of Fame ceremony.
“At the same time, I live with a lot of pride.”
The story of Johnny Football: From an unheralded recruit to an overnight celebrity
The 70-minute film is filled with fantastic anecdotes, interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. Manziel’s former agent Erik Burkhardt offered up some of the most colorful stories about Manziel that most had no idea had happened — like how he passed a drug test before the NFL Combine and that Burkhardt himself was running routes for Manziel’s private workout with the Cleveland Browns because the quarterback had partied so hard with the receivers the night before that none showed up.
Manziel fulfilled his dream of becoming a 1st Round pick, and yet, one of the most illuminating quotes from the doc was when he said, immediately after getting drafted by the Browns at No. 16: “When I got everything that I wanted, I felt the most empty inside.”
It’s revealed that Manziel was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and his mental health battles resulted in more destructive off-the-field behavior. He refused to watch film on future NFL opponents (0.0 iPad tape), and was binging drugs and alcohol. There are troubling domestic abuse allegations brought by his ex-girlfriend, too.
He admits to being miserable in Cleveland and hoping to self-sabotage his way out of town. By early 2016, he was openly using OxyContin and cocaine regularly and lost more than 40 pounds over a nine-month span. He was cut by the Browns and his NFL career was over, leading Manziel to spiral even deeper into a dark hole.
Despite his family’s behest, he refused to enter rehab multiple times and went on a “$5 million bender” before attempting suicide. He’d bought a gun and tried to end his life, but the firearm malfunctioned.
“I wanted to get as bad as humanly possible to where it made sense, and it made it seem like an excuse and an out for me,” Manziel said of his suicide attempt.
Still to this day, don’t know what happened. But the gun just clicked on me.”
And yet, this is not a doc about closure or finality.
Johnny Manziel is still clearly searching for something. For purpose. Peace. Direction.
His road to recovery is ongoing.
There’s still a hint of arrogance and infallibility with Johnny Football. Manziel did plenty of soul-cleansing in the film, but it’s evident that Johnny Football — after the fame, fortune and failure — is still seeking “a pursuit of happiness.”
Here’s hoping he finds it.
A couple other takeaways from Netflix’s Johnny Football doc:
I’m not going to spoil the entire doc. Go watch it. But I do want to comment on a couple other very interesting nuggets.
Manziel dunked all over the NCAA during the doc, explicitly saying, “I have a deep hatred against the NCAA.” While he made some money under the table via autographs, Manziel was shortchanged millions as a victim in a then NIL-less world of college sports.
The doc outlined the absurd amounts of money the Aggies raised off Manziel, including $740.6 million in the year after he won the Heisman ($300 million more than any year prior in fund-raising history at the school). Texas A&M also reportedly netted $37 million in free press from Manziel’s Heisman and Adidas sold $45 million in No. 2 Aggies jerseys. None of that money when to him, though, with head coach Kevin Sumlin netting a giant extension and all sorts of facilities upgrades being paid for.
The doc also revealed an all-time lie that everyone — from Wright Thompson to Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd — ran with: That Johnny Manziel’s family had oil money.
“It’s not Garth Brooks money,” Paul Manziel, Johnny’s dad, told Thompson in the feature a decade ago.
“But it’s a lot of money.”
*** UPDATE *** Thompson reached out and said he believes there’s more nuance here than a total fabrication. “Johnny’s granddad does have money. And would loan it to johnny. His dad didn’t have access to it, is how i remember the issue. … They had upper middle class money.”
Manziel and his best friend ‘Uncle Nate’ were running a business off the books to fund the lavish lifestyle of courtside seats and private planes. When the NCAA came sniffing around various lucrative autograph sessions, Nate alleges he concocted the whole oil money story.
Manziel was suspended for all of a half of the Aggies’ opener in 2013, dodging any real punishment for breaking archaic NCAA rules. Nate ultimately was the fall guy and he and Johnny haven’t spoken since. RIP the friendship.