Ball Played: C is for Carrasco, and that’s good enough to win
June 3, 2015Know Your Foe: Draymond Green, Heart and Soul
June 3, 2015When Cleveland Browns head coach Mike Pettine says that Johnny Manziel’s water bottle-tossing incident from over the weekend is a non-story, I don’t really believe him. The fact that he’s being asked about it and the fact that it was all over the press means that it isn’t a “non-story.” No matter the media high road you want to take with regard to what news is, living in denial is a bad look. Just because you don’t care about a story doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. All that being said, when Mike Pettine calls it a non-story as he did at Browns OTAs, I believe him. In his world, this is a non-story and that’s really the problem when we’re talking about a quarterback who is barely removed from his first round draft selection.
But first, here are the Mike Pettine “quotes” on the matter.
On his thoughts about the incident that QB Johnny Manziel was involved in this past weekend:
“I have no thoughts. It’s a non-story.”
On if it worries him:
“It’s a non-story.”
On if he’s concerned that these ‘non-stories’ keep happening:
“No, I’m not.”
On how the incident becomes a story, and if it would become a story if DB Donte Whitner threw a water bottle or if Whitner would ever throw a water a bottle:
“It’s a hypothetical. You could insert any name. I think under the right set of circumstances, everybody standing here could get to the point where they would do something along those lines. Again, I don’t see it as a story.”
On if he talks to Manziel about maintaining a lower profile because of what he’s gone through and that he may be more of a target now than he’s ever been:
“We’ve had a conversation. I’ll keep those details private.”
On Manziel bringing a lot of attention, dealing with it and keeping it from becoming a distraction:
“I don’t see it as a distraction.”
On if it concerns him that Manziel can be provoked and if he has a way to go on the football field dealing with that:
“I have the details of what happened. Like I said, in my mind, it’s a non-story.”
All of this is both true and untrue. Johnny Manziel and his name in the news is not a non-story, but in terms of the Cleveland Browns and their goal of playing and winning football games, it is. That’s the issue, ultimately, with Manziel and his career in the NFL. He can’t find his way into the news for the primary reason that he ever became famous, i.e. for playing football. He finds himself in the news for anything but football, unless he’s getting embarrassed by the Bengals in an over-hyped debut.
Even more depressing? This kid has physical tools and talents that you can’t teach and he seems completely intent on wasting them, even in a year after getting a wake up call and spending time working on himself in rehab. Obviously it wasn’t going to show up on the field right away, but it’s concerning when you combine tweets like this from Zac Jackson referring to his actual football performance…
I've seen two Browns OTA practices now and I agree with Mike Pettine. There is most certainly not a quarterback competition.
— Zac Jackson (@AkronJackson) June 2, 2015
…and the “non-story” variety of news that we’re getting during his off time away from the team. You don’t have to give up on Johnny Manziel if you don’t want to, but to have anything but outside (and I mean really outside) hopes for him to become a real NFL quarterback, you’re wishing on a falling star.
40 Comments
I disagree with you. I believe it is a non-story. This guy was being pestered for 2 hours and he finally snapped. Security should have been called long ago, and the only reason the kid didn’t get up and leave is because he was at an event.
It’s such a non-story because nothing actually happened.
It’s only a “story” because the media makes it one, and yokels out there will click any story that says Johnny Manziel. This has zero to do with football, so don’t ask the football coach for analysis. You’d have better luck asking a journalism professor or web marketing professional.
And by “snapped”, you mean – “threw a plastic bottle in someone’s general vicinity”.
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/62756317.jpg
maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. that’s the problem. I’ve read that he just snapped and threw a plastic bottle against the ground, in the direction of, but nowhere near, this stalker. Of course it becomes a “Johnny tried to kill a man with a projectile” story.
I don’t blame Pettine one bit for stone-walling the media. To begin with, there’s too much drama around this team, and he just wants it to go away. Second, I’ll bet Pettine is concerned about this because even in sobriety, Manziel is still acting immaturely. But that’s something Pettine has to deal with in-house and not in the media. And that is the right thing for him to do.
Does the circus ever end when it comes to the Browns?
So our definition of “snapped” needs to be amended to strike “in someone’s general vicinity”.
Call me when one of these stories result in JFF growing three inches, putting on thirty pounds of muscles, and receiving a brain transplant from Peyton Manning.
Nope. That’s why Jimmy and Nike came up with our nine new clown costumes.
“… Manziel is still acting immaturely.”
Oh? Try tolerating a heckler for 2 hours and see if you can resist retaliating against him. I’m also curious as to the severity of the heckler’s heckling on Johnny.
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I didn’t say he wasn’t provoked. I said he acted immaturely.
Can you think of any other QB who would throw stuff at a heckler? Maybe there are, but team leaders shouldn’t act like that.
“You don’t have to give up on Johnny Manziel if you don’t want to” why would any fan give up on Johnny Manziel? It’s no skin off my back. The same way I had high hopes for JR Smith on the Cavs, I have high hopes for Johnny Manziel. You can give up on Johnny Manziel if you want to . If it doesn’t work out it doesn’t work out. It’s not unusual for kids at this age to be immature. Why do we need to make a decision now? And the fact that the story ended up on CNN is a complete joke as well.
Like Saggy said, he may not have thrown anything at the heckler.
In that case I think I saw him snap like 10 passes last year.
The incident might be trivial lets face it if not for Manziel we’d probably never even know. The reason it could be a story, at least for me, is Manziel threw a water bottle which I believe missed. Throwing the water bottle is pretty immature. The fact that he missed is worse since he is a quarterback. Either way I don’t forsee this guy playing much at all for this team UNLESS McCown gets hurt. I hope.
He didn’t complete many of those either did he?
Kisses? Finger?
I’m with you grandpa on this one at the least it showed immaturity.
If Ray Rice threw a water bottle at a fan for “heckling” him, I am pretty sure it’d be a story, or Peyton Manning, or Tom Brady. But you don’t see those guys doing that do you? Think Tom Brady is catching his share of flak from fans currently? Think Rothelisberger took non-stop heckling and harassment after his rape accusasion? You bet your butt.
Separate yourself from the Manziel hype and look at it objectively.
Misses with waterbottles, can’t expect him to hit with footballs right?
A huge reason why I hoped we’d never see Manziel here. This team and franchise didn’t need someone like this around they already had a hard enough time with everything else football related.
No you don’t see those guys doing that stuff. All you see is Ray Rice beating a woman senseless, and Tom Brady lying about his cheating. But nothing like throwing a water bottle at the ground.
agree. Manziel has made himself a d-bag magnet. So if his personality doesn’t permit him to cloister himself like a gym rat, if he simply has to see and be seen, call security on the d-bag or leave and go to another hot spot. Johnny was at the 4 Seasons pool with access to plenty of help. If the heckling went on over 2 hours as reported then Johnny was just trying to make a point by not using any number of methods to stop it without a headline.
Exactly maybe if he’d have hit the guy this wouldn’t be as bad! (kidding)
You keep saying at the ground, not sure why when even the police reported he threw it at the guy.
But since you are going to put up a strawman argument about the nature of the offenses that draw scrutiny and invite heckling rather than how they handle the heckling it appears you have no rebuttal or counter-argument.
How to increas our Acount balance with waitingfornextyear … kEEP READING
on the other hand,,, it actually is non-story. “asshole teenager hectors celebrity.” wow, stop the presses man. it’s only a story insofar as our 8th grade schoolgirl social/talkradio media apparatus needs something to cluck* about for the next 72 hours because never in the history of the world have adults been so collectively ill-equipped to discuss items that matter. just passed a trade bill to ‘open new markets’ in asia but your government wont share details… and it’s -as warden norton says- gone like a fart in the wind, but johnny manziel not suffering an asshole glady is still being written about five days later.
*apologies to schoolgirls and for the mixed metaphor.
all i can go by is what i read from the net. However, according to the report THE BOTTLE WAS EMPTY and it was THROWN AT THE GROUND. It may as well have been a plastic bag.
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As Manziel left the golf course, the fan yelled, “Good luck never starting in the NFL,” the friend said. Manziel said “What?” and threw the bottle, which the friend claimed was empty, toward the ground as his friends told him to ignore the heckler.
The fan was about 20 yards away and Manziel threw the bottle in the fan’s direction but not close to his body and more like a football spike, said the friend, who remembered the fan yelling, “Good throw, Johnny.”
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/12986512/johnny-manziel-cleveland-browns-harassed-fan-throws-water-bottle-fairly-straightforward-incident
not many things worse than being a d-bag magnet. maybe being a d-bag.
You know who’s not a bum? Whoever it is that applies that Rembrandt painting application to his girlfriend’s face everyday.
That must have taken HOURS.
“This kid has physical tools and talents that you can’t teach and he seems completely intent on wasting them…”
Because he reacted to a heckler and two days of OTA installs in t-shirts and shorts don’t look the way you and Zac think they should? C’mon now, you’re acting very Grossi-esque.
A throw “against the ground, in the direction of, but nowhere near” its intended target? Yup, sounds like Johnny for sure.
Has anybody noticed that the “loud mouth heckler” that took 2 hrs to finally get ANY reaction from Manzeil is the very own The_ Real_Shamrock. Welcome to the show sir. Or Ma’am. I don’t know.
I usually roll my eyes at comments complaining about the media blowing up a story, since they’re just talking about whatever is interesting to their viewers/listeners/readers/etc. The story is the story, whatever that may be. However, it’s unfair to trumpet a tiny incident from the mountaintops and then declare the trumpeting as proof that it matters beyond espn radio talking points. You can’t decide what is a story by listening back to your own show. Mike Pettine’s day doesn’t begin and end when the reporters start and stop asking questions. Do all these people think that the Browns are all huddled by the radio or reading the latest blog entries before practice? Manziel didn’t get in trouble, didn’t relapse on his addiction, and is in exactly the same place with regards to his hopes to become an NFL starter as he was a week ago. Other than getting asked about it during the 10 minutes of each day allocated for press, it really is a non-issue. It’s a little bit annoying to read a story that says because Pettine is getting asked about it and radio personalities are weighing in on it, that it must have some bearing on what happens with Manziel and the Browns. That’s a pretty heavily media-centric view of sports, and I don’t think it represents reality.
When is it going to get through your thick head that Johnny’s an a$$hole magnet? Walk around for a few days and have total strangers yell things at you and see if you’re Mr. CalmCoolNCollected. If he were out looking for trouble, that would be one thing – but he’s not. And this has nothing to do with whether he’s nfl material or not. And it has everything to do with rude stupid people in and out of journalism.
So now we have a story about the coach calling another story a “non-story.” Great. I just wish Coach had sad it’s “nothing.” We wouldn’t have this story (about the non-story story).
Official statement from the PD:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/12986512/johnny-manziel-cleveland-browns-harassed-fan-throws-water-bottle-fairly-straightforward-incident
“That turned into badgering on the kid’s part, and it reached the point where Johnny Manziel threw a bottle of water at the kid. I don’t know if it hit him. I guess I would say that ramped it up a bit.”
McLellan said the 32-ounce water bottle Manziel threw was about three-quarters full. A witness told police that the bottle hit a brick wall.
A friend of Manziel’s then stepped between him and the 18-year-old and pushed him.
“That’s about the time hotel security and our officers stepped in,” McLellan said. “Try to put a stop to it.”
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If you want to read something that will truly make you throw your water bottle, The Guardian details how the usual corporate suspects – Goldman Sachs, Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, etc – paid senators on both sides of the aisle to fast track the TPP Bill. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp
As for the “8th grade schoolgirl social/talkradio media apparatus”, I recently came across a fabulous book by Chris Hedges called “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” that eviscerates/laments our current corporate media landscape. Hedges is a polemicist, and perhaps a bit leftwing for your tastes, but here he’s making a cultural critique that is nonpartisan and increasingly relevant – especially as massive trade deals advance in the cover of Bruce Jenner’s sex change and Johnny Manziel’s water bottle. Has very much changed the way I interact with sports media, and why I was thrilled to see your dispatch from Walmart a few weeks ago.
Anyhow, I’m always looking for a good read as well, so welcome any recommendations from your end.