Alouettes hope Manziel Show is here to stay this time
Montreal needs much-hyped quarterback to deliver against struggling Blue Bombers
What Alouettes head coach Mike Sherman would really like to see, is for the Johnny Manziel Show to get an extended run.
So far, it has garnered poor to middling ratings and has been on hiatus for a few weeks.
It returns to televisions around the country Friday night and it would make the head coach very happy if it were a fixture for the rest of the CFL season.
“It would be nice,” Sherman said Thursday at Investors Group Field, where the 3-9 Alouettes will play the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
“This is a unique situation that I’ve been in this year.”
When Manziel, the former Heisman Trophy winner who came to the CFL amid much fanfare, lines up under centre on Friday, it will mark the sixth time the Alouettes have changed starting quarterbacks this year.
It went from Drew Willy to Jeff Mathews to Vernon Adams to Manziel to Antonio Pipkin and now back to Manziel, a kind of quarterback upheaval even the best teams would have a tough time battling through.
Sherman, who was head coach of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and at Texas A&M before coming to the CFL, has never seen anything quite like it.
“When you coach Brett Favre, never,” Sherman said. “He’s always been the quarterback.
“It’s tough on receivers, it’s tough on the head coach and the offensive line,” Sherman continued. “They need the familiarity of cadence and where the quarterback is setting up and so forth and ‘Is he a runner or not a runner?’ and so on.”
Manziel’s first two starts in the CFL were underwhelming, and he suffered a concussion that kept him out for several weeks in the second game, but he has a skill set and pedigree that suggests big things could be in store once he figures it all out.
Will those things show this week against a 5-7 Bombers team that has lost four straight games to fall to last place in the West Division? Manziel said he’d like to start with a win and go from there.
“Definitely, feel the need to win and want to win,” Manziel said. “There’s a big desire from this group to come out and play good and perform well tomorrow and I fully expect us to do that.”
Manziel is into put up or shut up territory after expressing frustration last week about Pipkin starting ahead of him. He’s getting another shot after Pipkin threw four interceptions in a loss to the B.C. Lions and the expectation is there for him to deliver.
“I think there’s pressure at the quarterback position no matter what,” Manziel said. “We need to break a spell of inconsistency that’s been over this franchise for a while. It starts with one person stepping up and playing well consistently. That’s what it’s all about. Until that happens on a consistent basis, there’s going to continue to be doubts about that.”
The Alouettes are playing much better in recent weeks than they were when the Bombers played in Montreal on June 23.
On that day the Bombers won 56-10 and put up 588 yards of offence with rookie backup quarterback Chris Streveler behind centre.
“It was early in the season and there was a lot of things that we weren’t yet used to as a team,” Alouettes middle linebacker Henoc Muamba said. “We’re a completely different team. We’ve grown, we’re a lot better and we’re excited for the challenge.”
Getting back-to-back wins over Toronto and Ottawa in Weeks 11 and 12 certainly energized the team and has them believing a late-season charge is not out of the question.
“It definitely is a confidence booster,” Muamba said. “I already believed we had that in us and I think there’s plenty more where that came from.”
As for the Johnny Manziel Show? Well, the small sample size hasn’t provided enough information for us to know if it’s going to be a long-running series. Either way, Manziel’s life has been a soap opera for a long time and he’d just like to see a storyline that turns out in his favour.
“Personally, on and off the field, I’ve come a long way from December of 2015 and the last time I was on a football team and walking onto a football field,” the 25-year-old from Texas said.
“It’s been an interesting journey. It’s taken a lot to get here, a lot of people here on the outside. Life’s changed a lot for me, but I’m happy with where I’m at and glad to be back to football.”
STOPPING HARRIS KEY
Muamba knows as well as anyone how dynamic Bombers running back Andrew Harris can be.
Harris, who is second in the CFL in rushing yards and only 16 yards away from hitting 1,000 for the fourth time in his career, is the driving force of the Bombers offence this season.
However, teams that have shut him down have made the Bombers one-dimensional and their passing game has been nothing special.
“Andrew Harris is one of the better running backs in the CFL and he does some great things,” Muamba said.
“The offence is run through him, that’s not a secret. They’ve got a really good O -line, that’s very nasty, too, but as Harris goes, that team goes.”