Manziel's CFL Debut Morphs into Charity Game

It's gonna take more than a hotshot QB to make the Montréal Alouettes a competitive football team.

Dudes are at a level of suckitude that only the Cleveland Browns could appreciate.

So, who's surprised that they'd make a Brownie-sorta move to turn things around?

With the bar that low, who better to bring in but Johnny Football?

 

As if.

Turned out that Johnny Manziel's kryptonite was the word pro.

Dude bombed in Cleveland not only because of, among other things, his cavalier relationship with the Browns' playbook, such as it was. A league populated by quicker and faster players countered his freelancing to the extent that Hall of Fame scrambler Fran Tarkenton looks even more of a legend now.

 

If only, Mr Football.

The CFL should be where Manziel finds redemption, if he ever does. Its fields are big enough to see the curvature of the earth, which puts less value on a slinger's accuracy.

And damn, does he need all the margin of error he can get. Especially with this team.

 

To be sure, the Alouettes really suck.

However, Manziel's mechanical carelessness -- throwing off his back foot in INT No 4, for example -- shows more than rust. Dude's gotta get his fundamentals straight for once in his career.

 

Montréal coach Mike Sherman clearly knew what he was getting when he traded for Mr Football.

In so doing, he pushed ex-Eastern Washington Eagle and Oregon Duck Vernon Adams Jr into backup status, which was still an upgrade for Adams, who was backup-to-the-backup when Manziel showed up at Hamilton.

 

Adams wound up doing the mop-up thing in this 53-11 blowout.

Manziel's no Tarkenton, or even Doug Flutie. Still, he is on the field in a real league. It'd help if he had a real team around him, but after an 887-day layoff between regular-season games, he can't have everything.

Well, he did, once, but threw it all away. Getting it back is gonna be a task.