Brian Hoyer responded on Tuesday to an allegation made by Johnny Manziel against him.
Manziel made plenty of headlines last week over what he said during an appearance on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” show. One thing Manziel had said that drew attention was that Hoyer was unhelpful toward him while the two were quarterbacks in Cleveland.
Hoyer, Manziel and Connor Shaw were the three quarterbacks who played for the Browns in 2014, which was Manziel’s rookie season. Hoyer made 13 starts, Manziel two, and Shaw made one.
Manziel said on Sharpe’s show that Hoyer didn’t help him because the journeyman quarterback saw it as an opportunity to finally be a starter.
“My quarterback room was not a home for me because of Brian Hoyer,” Manziel told Sharpe. “Brian Hoyer had been waiting on an opportunity to go really provide for his family, get an opportunity and he saw how much of an upper hand he had on me, and he didn’t hold back when it came to that.
“There were instances in the quarterback room early on where I would ask the same question a couple of times and he’d be at the head of the table and go, ‘Pfft, again? We’re doing this again? Keep him out of it. Cut that off.’ And I don’t have a bad word to say about Brian Hoyer. That is just fact of what happened in that room.”
Manziel said that you could ask Shaw or the Browns’ quarterbacks coach at the time, Dowell Loggains, to corroborate the claims.
Hoyer joined NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” show on Tuesday and responded. The 38-year-old veteran described himself as “apathetic” toward Manziel and acknowledged he was trying to win the job.
Johnny Manziel recently spoke on his rookie season with the Browns saying "The QB room was not a home for be because of Brian Hoyer."@bhoyer7 responds ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/74WZwrYQIg
— Good Morning Football (@gmfb) February 27, 2024
“Look, I’ll be honest, Johnny’s right, that was an opportunity for me to go out and be the starter for my hometown team, but I was kind of apathetic toward him I would say. I didn’t go out of my way to be a jerk to him, but in the same sense, I was trying to win this job and go out and perform the best I could. I feel sorry that he feels that way about it,” Hoyer said on “Good Morning Football.”
Hoyer said he was more upset with the Browns for drafting Manziel.
“I always looked at it like, I never had any animosity toward Johnny. If anything, it was toward the owner and the GM who were always trying to push him ahead of me when clearly he wasn’t ready and I was gonna be the starter. It’s unfortunate that that left a bad taste in his mouth, but like I said, never had any animosity toward Johnny. I feel bad that he feels that way, but I don’t really recall it being that way, either.”
Hoyer didn’t entirely deny Manziel’s claims. And it’s hard to blame him for behaving the way he did.
Manziel did not study, did not watch film, and akin to a class clown preventing all the kids in class from learning because he wasn’t doing his homework. Had Manziel taken more of a professional approach to the situation, things probably would have been much, much different.
