TICATS HAVE NOTHING BUT RESPECT FOR FORMER ‘BROTHER’ MANZIEL
Alouettes’ new No. 1 quarterback faces his old team in first regular season CFL start
For the better part of the last 21/2 months, June Jones and his Hamilton Tiger Cats staff had been getting Johnny Manziel acquainted with the CFL game and prepared to play.
Friday night in Montreal, in his first game with any real ramifications in terms of team success or failure, Manziel will line up against Jones and his Ticats.
In similar situations, though not for the first time, will be ex-Ticats and offensive linemen Tony Washington and Landon Rice, while ex-Alouettes Chris Williams and Jamaal Westerman will oppose their old team for the first time.
But all eyes will be on Johnny Football, who will be making his first CFL start and first start of any real consequence in almost three years.
The Ticats are downplaying the matchup, which is what a team does when it hasn’t won in three consecutive games and desperately needs to right the ship. They can’t afford to focus on bettering Manziel because, as they have proved the last two weeks, they can have the better quarterback in the game and still lose.
But there’s no question Manziel’s first start coming against the team that has basically provided him with everything he knows about the CFL, save for a week of practice in Montreal, will be the biggest narrative in the game.
One would think the Ticats would have a distinct advantage in this one having seen exactly what the former Heisman Trophy winner is capable of in his present condition.
But as Jones pointed out, he thought he had a pretty good book on Manziel at his previous job with Southern Methodist University and the young man still put a beating on his Mustangs.
Perhaps the biggest advantage the Ticats have going into the game is Manziel’s lack of comfort in Montreal’s offence. Manziel was only starting to get comfortable in a CFL setting and in Hamilton’s offence when he was traded.
Five practices into his Montreal tenure it’s unlikely he could have mastered the entire Montreal offence.
Even that knowledge provides little comfort for Jones, who points out Manziel’s greatest gift doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with mastering schemes.
“I watched the half Johnny played (for Hamilton) in Montreal in the pre-season and I think he might have had about 25 plays,” Jones said. “He didn’t really know what he was doing, but he completed 65 per cent of his passes and threw a touchdown pass and scrambled all over the place. That is what he is capable of doing. If you get him plugged in — which I’m sure they will — get him plugged into things that he understands and knows where to go, then he’s a good player.”
Jones has little doubt the Alouettes will identify the plays Manziel is comfortable with and tailor the offensive package around those.
“I think you package your plays and let Johnny be Johnny,” Jones said. “He’ll know where he is supposed to go with the ball and then make it happen.
“I think his ability to improvise up here is going to be huge. That’s why I always had the (positive) comments I had about him. Hopefully he’ll wait a couple of weeks before that happens.”
Because he is Manziel, players in this league had specifically targeted celebration dances, mimicking some of Manziel’s own, when they made plays against him earlier this year while he was with Hamilton.
Ticats defensive end Adrian Tracy said no one would be seeing that sort of disrespect from him, certainly not of a former teammate.
“I was watching the game when we played Edmonton and a couple of people did that,” Tracy said. “I took offence to that. That’s his thing and I think they were mocking him and making fun of him. This is someone who has come up here and put his nose to the grindstone and showed our team nothing but hard work and being a student of the game. So when people do that, especially him being a brother even if he’s on another team, that’s still my guy and I know he’s got my back and I got his, period. So when I see people do things like that, it really pisses me off.
“At the end of the day, this is a human, he is out there and trying to pick himself up from where he was and all anyone wants is an opportunity.”
I think you package your plays and let Johnny be Johnny. He’ll know where he is supposed to go with the ball and then make it happen. JUNE JONES, Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach