Johnny Watch: Day 5
June Jones says he’s no longer strictly pacing Johnny Manziel’s integration into Tiger-Cat practices.
“Yes and no,” he said. “I did the first couple of days, but now we’re into practice, and he’s getting a lot of film, getting reps, doing the virtual reality stuff, it’s going to come fast.”
Manziel is taking roughly the same number of reps as the other four quarterbacks playing behind clearly-defined starter, Jeremiah Masoli.
Among the pass-heavy reps, he did get a chance to run a quarterback draw, and scrambled a couple of times to extend plays. “He was fine,” Jones said, explaining that on one sequence, Manziel read the wrong play off his wrist band. “He got a little off the script. But he made them work.”
Manziel says he’s becoming progressively more acclimatized to the Canadian game.
“It’s a more aggressive approach as far as seeing how these receivers are getting in and out of things and starting to have it slow down in terms of the front and the coverage,” he said. “It was good. I got a chance to run for 10, 12 yards. We have three or four quarterbacks in here who can really run. I think that’s a whole dimension of this offence as well.”
Jones said he hasn’t yet determined Manziel will take more snaps in the first (June 1) or second (June 9) pre-season game. He wants Masoli to “march down the field and score then get him out of there,” next Friday against Toronto then have the same approach, with a little more playing time, the following week in Montreal.