NFL waffles on Manziel
Quarterback plays on while league lets slide its leadership role on domestic violence
Johnny Manziel should not have been on the football field Thursday night.
Not in an NFL game. Not playing in a league that claims it wants to take a leadership role in the domestic violence discussion.
But Manziel’s starting at quarterback for the Cleveland Browns didn’t ignite mass protest, and it didn’t stop many of us from tuning in.
We wanted to see if Manziel could look like a professional quarterback. We wanted to gauge how much he has grown since a dreadful rookie season in which his preparation was nonexistent and his maturity lacking.
That is what the NFL, the most popular game in all of our towns, has on most of us.
When the games begin, we want football.
Blocking and tackling, touchdowns and field goals, fumbles and interceptions.
The NFL is smart enough to give us, the people, what we want.
So many of us were disgusted by the video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée that he is out of the league and hasn’t gotten a look from a team since the punch made the news.
So few of us were bothered by the recent Manziel incident with his girlfriend (one we didn’t see on video) that we had no problem with Johnny being Mr. Football on Thursday night.
If you need evidence of where the NFL stands, the CBS crew didn’t cite Manziel’s “issue he is dealing with” until after much of the audience had changed the channel with Cincinnati ahead by the final 31-10 score and only seven minutes remaining.
When Manziel led the Browns 92 yards to a touchdown — a 12-yard pass to Duke Johnson on a play that just a handful of quarterbacks can
make — just before halftime, domestic violence wasn’t on the menu.
And the NFL official Twitter feed was more than happy to tweet out Manziel’s touchdown celebration.
If while the Browns drove downfield to that score you were thinking about Manziel slamming his girlfriend’s head against the window as they sped down Interstate 90 — per an eye witness, according to the police report — you are not a good football fan.
If you were more concerned about Manziel being a threat to a woman he is dating than a threat to the Bengals’ defense, you are not what has made the NFL what it is: the most successful team sport in the country.
True NFL fans aren’t overly interested in player behavior unless it impacts their fantasy roster.
Cincinnati quarterback Andy Dalton, a Texas high school (Katy) and college (TCU) star, is big, tall and noted for being of high character.
Manziel, a Texas high school (Tivy) and college (Texas A&M) star, is slight, short and noted for having character issues.
Character matters didn’t matter as much to football fans as which one of those quarterbacks could lead his team to victory.
And with rare exceptions, that is the way it should be.
There is little doubt the NFL spent far too much time in the last 10 years talking about the bad actions of its players.
Commissioner Roger Goodell’s effort to clean up the game from a reputation that wasn’t as bad as he thought led to too much talk about off-thefield misdeeds by a small percentage of players.
Now the bad-boys reputation, which at this point is even more inaccurate, has traction.
The Manziel incident could be an interesting case. He wasn’t charged with a crime but has yet to be officially cleared by the league. There was an NFL. com report that Manziel will face no discipline for his actions.
That seems likely, considering the incident occurred 31/2 weeks ago and Manziel met with NFL senior advisor Lisa Friel more than a week ago. If the league were going to bench Manziel, it would have done so already.
He seems to have done enough to be suspended, particularly by a league that purports to be on high alert. The NFL says it is reviewing the situation.
Ignoring the Manziel case isn’t the first step in returning to the good ol’ days in which the league’s standard response to a player running afoul of the law was to allow the legal case to run its course.
In many ways, those were actually the bad ol’ days. If the NFL thinks returning to them is possible in 2015, it is kidding itself.
Still, as used to be the case, if the NFL benched Johnny now, it would do so only because of political pressure. But there is no furor to do so.
In a perfect world, such politics wouldn’t have a place in sports entertainment. In a perfect world, there would be no politics.
The NFL isn’t worried about a perfect world.
And as the Manziel case is showing, it isn’t all that concerned about leading the way on domestic violence issues.
Maybe that is what the NFL learned in studying how poorly it handled the Rice case. Make noise by responding to the noise. Otherwise, be quiet.
And let Johnny try to be good.