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Johnny Manziel wasn't on Browns' draft board three months before QB's selection, and here's why that matters this week

Frank Schwab
NFL writer

How Johnny Manziel came to be a Cleveland Browns draft pick has always been a mystery, and it’s even stranger now that former CEO Joe Banner said Manziel wasn’t even on the team’s draft board in early February that year.

We speak about dysfunction on NFL teams in broad terms, but the Manziel story seems to be a great example of it in action. Banner, on a podcast with The MMQB’s Albert Breer, said when he was fired on Feb. 11, 2014, Manziel was not on the team’s draft board.

“To be completely candid, at that point he wasn’t on the board,” Banner told Breer. “Our attitude at that point was we weren’t comfortable with the risks that came with Johnny and we weren’t going to pick him.”

Johnny Manziel with Roger Goodell at the 2014 NFL draft. (AP)
Johnny Manziel with Roger Goodell at the 2014 NFL draft. (AP)

So from Feb. 11 to May 8, Manziel went from being off the Browns’ board to being selected by Cleveland No. 22 overall. That’s incredible. We know how historically bad that pick turned out to be.

There can be many reasons for big changes on a team’s draft board between Feb. 11 to draft night, and Banner said other people in the Browns’ building liked Manziel. But Banner said he, general manager Michael Lombardi and then-assistant general manager Ray Farmer met every Monday morning from the first week of the 2013 season to when he was fired to watch nothing but quarterback film for 3-4 hours. So it’s not like they hadn’t done homework on Manziel. Banner and Lombardi were fired on Feb. 11, 2014, and Farmer was promoted to general manager.

It wasn’t just the stories of Manziel’s partying that had Cleveland worried; the Browns brass at that time didn’t even think Manziel was very good as quarterback. Banner told Breer he was “beyond shocked” when Manziel was the Browns’ pick.

“To me it’s a great mystery,” Banner said. “I’d love to know from the time I left to the time they drafted, whether it was a function of deciding they were willing to take a chance on more because they thought the upside and talent was so great. Frankly, when I left we had some concerns about his talent. We weren’t sure he was that accurate. We weren’t sure he could stay healthy. And we weren’t completely sold on the mental acumen part of it. Then, of course, there were off-field issues that we were aware of that were concerning.”

Rehashing the Browns’ mistake on Manziel in 2014 is important because we enter this week’s draft not knowing exactly what to expect from the Browns. Banner and Lombardi are long gone, Farmer was eventually fired too, but team owner Jimmy Haslam remains.

There has always been speculation that Haslam was the driving force behind the Manziel pick. The Browns reportedly had Teddy Bridgewater rated higher going into the draft (Banner said the team had Bridgewater ranked as the top quarterback in the draft when he was fired) but traded up to draft Manziel ahead of Bridgewater anyway. People have always wondered if that was solely Haslam’s call (complete with the infamous story about a homeless man telling Haslam to take Manziel), even though the team denied it at the time. We still don’t know definitively how it went down, but if Banner is to be believed, something drastic happened for Manziel to go from off the Browns’ board to a first-round pick in three months.

Now we’re coming up to another draft, and one of the hot rumors is Browns will pass consensus top prospect Myles Garrett for quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. Cleveland.com’s Mary Kay Cabot wrote a thorough rundown of where we stand: Hue Jackson and the coaching staff want Garrett. Browns head of football operations Sashi Brown gave “strong vibes” at a pre-draft news conference the team has settled on Garrett, Cabot wrote, but said the front office is still considering Trubisky.

Or maybe Haslam is considering Trubisky. With the Browns, you never know.

Trubisky is far from a can’t-miss quarterback prospect. If the Browns draft Trubisky first overall because the football people in the front office view him as a franchise quarterback and can get some consensus with the coaching staff, that’s reasonable. Hopefully it won’t be because of an impulsive decision, or a homeless man telling the owner he has a hunch.

But Banner’s story about Manziel reminds us the Browns are rarely predictable.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!