The legend of Johnny Manziel being drafted by the Cleveland Browns has been punctuated by the story that the former Heisman Trophy winner sent a text message to the team to convince them to draft him.
Now, two days after that story came out, we’re learning Manziel’s motivation for sending the text. Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot says Manziel sent the text message to the Browns because he was worried about someone else drafting him.
“There was a spot where we thought we might come off,” Manziel said Saturday via Cleveland.com. “So the ‘hurry up’ was more ‘we’ve heard another team is going to come up, maybe you guys don’t know that.’ There really wasn’t that much more to the conversation than a couple little threads.”
The Kansas City Chiefs were drafting at No. 23 and Cleveland traded up to No. 22 to select Manziel. There was a lot of talk that Kansas City was interested in taking Manziel, too.
So why would Manziel have preferred Cleveland to KC? Well, we know he felt a good connection with the team’s coaches, but the more likely reason is because he probably felt like he had a strong chance of being the guy, the franchise savior with the Browns rather than going to the Chiefs, where he likely would have had to back up Alex Smith. And if Manziel wasn’t worried about the Chiefs drafting him, maybe it was another team he heard was interested in him.
Whether Manziel was talking about the Chiefs or another team we really don’t know, but this just further reaffirms the notion that Manziel really really wanted to go to Cleveland. I’m sure that will mean a lot to Browns fans. An awful lot.
