Canadian Football League News

Any list of quarterbacks picked in the first round who turned out to be busts would include Johnny Manziel.

Heisman Trophy winner at Texas A&M. The future of the Cleveland Browns. Bah.

The party boy blew up after two seasons and didn’t play anywhere the last two years. Now he’s in the Canadian Football League and already on his second team, without having played a snap for the first.

The Montreal Alouettes, who have won only one of their five games, acquired Manziel last week from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He’s reunited with Als coach Mike Sherman, who recruited him to A&M. And he’ll be the backup to Vernon Adams, who was also acquired from the Ti-Cats after injuries felled the other Montreal quarterbacks.

Manziel hardly learned the Browns’ playbook in two seasons, but he’s supposedly a new man now with his devils behind him. And he will be in uniform as the Alouettes host the Edmonton Eskimos on Thursday night.

“He’ll definitely be in uniform on the sideline and whether he crosses over onto the field, we’ll have to wait and see,” Sherman said.

The Browns weren’t any good when Manziel was drafted by them and neither are the Alouettes, who balance the CFL’s worst offense (69) points with the worst defense (league-high 148 points allowed).

Still, he was an exciting, freelancing load of thrills with the Aggies and he has that Heisman Trophy from 2012. There was something there once, but Manziel squandered it in the usual wanton ways.

Perhaps the CFL gives him an opportunity to succeed. Perhaps he really has changed. Perhaps he makes something of it.

We’ll see. We’ll be watching. But we will always bear in mind the words of famed boxing trainer Cus D’Amato: “People who are born round don’t die square.”

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman