For the first time, Johnny Manziel is opening up about his ill-fated final season with the Cleveland Browns, including his now-infamous trip to Las Vegas in disguise.
Manziel appeared on former teammate Joe Thomas’s ThomaHawk podcast on Uninterrupted Wednesday and detailed the events that led to the end of his Browns career, starting with the concussion he suffered late in the season.
“Go into the building Monday and I know I’m a little off,” Manziel said of the week after his concussion, via Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com. “And the Tuesday off day comes and I go into the building for a little bit and at this point in time I had like three or four of my friends up from Texas. It was towards the end of the season and we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re 3 and whatever we are, and [it was] just the wrong mindset of being a little over it.
“And then once these guys came up there, they were in party mode. They were in ‘Let’s go to the basement and bang some March Madness and play pool and drink Four Locos’ type of thing … and then Joe will remember this like it was yesterday. We come into the offensive line meeting we have every day at like 7 a.m. on Tuesday. I don’t know if it’s a combination of me being concussed, having drank the night before or just being out of it, but I walk into the meeting for probably like 15 seconds and I’m like ‘Nope. No way is this going to happen. My head is loopy.'”
Manziel was hospitalized, and knowing that his season was over — and also struggling with domestic violence allegations involving his then-girlfriend — decided to go to Las Vegas to blow off steam. He managed to get into town undetected, but was spotted by a reporter at a casino. He had a flight home, but didn’t want to go, which led to the now-infamous Instagram dog photo and wig disguise to try to fend off the rumors.
“[I] put out an Instagram saying ‘I’m at home with my dog’ and I tag it in Avon, Ohio,” Manziel said.
The quarterback realized he couldn’t go out in Las Vegas without a disguise, so he made what he called the “reckless” decision to get a wig from a “very sketchy” place off the strip.
“I’m like ‘perfect,'” Manziel recalled. “I shave all of my hair but my mustache, so I had a little mustache going….It was like a blondish-brown mullet.
“I get back to the room or 3 or 4 in the morning. It’s already 7 East Coast time, and we play (the Steelers) at 1. I have to be there (for concussion treatment with the Browns) at 8 which is in an hour. I just turn my phone off and throw it in the drawer and ‘We’ll figure it out when we wake up.'”
Manziel felt that he had the support of the organization’s higher-ups even after these events, but the decision to bring in Hue Jackson as coach sealed his fate.
It’s easy to forget the insanity that consumed the end of Manziel’s Browns career. It’s fascinating to hear it from his view for the first time, even if it’s probably part of an effort to rehabilitate his image and come clean as he seeks a return to the league.
