Johnny Manziel attempted suicide after being cut by Cleveland Browns, documentary reveals
Amid director Ryan Duffy’s fascinating Netflix documentary “Untold: Johnny Football,” a fascinating look at the career of quarterback Johnny Manziel, was a startling confession.
Manziel, in the doc, confessed to spiraling more out of control after the Browns cut him in 2016, declining rehab and wallowing in a world of drugs and alcohol, he said, at one point calling it a $5 million bender as he looked to “burn it all down,” meaning the world that his alter ego Johnny Football created.
“I had planned to do everything I wanted to do at that point in my life," he said. "Spend as much money as I possibly could, and my plan was to take my life.”
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Manziel admitted buying a gun several months before and intended to use it.
"I wanted to get as bad as humanly possible,” he said, “to where it made sense and it made it seem like an excuse and out for me."
Fate had other plans.
“Still to this day, I don’t know what happened,” he said, "but the gun just clicked on me. I couldn’t fix what I’d done with Colleen (Crowley, his one-time girlfriend), with the NFL, with [Texas] A&M, everything.”
He was estranged from his family and he knew that the good times just might be over.
Manziel, by all accounts, rebuilt bridges, but he may be the epitome of "one day at a time" at this point in his life. But his sister Meri knows he’s not whole.
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“A lot of people wonder, you know, why isn’t he doing anything,” she said. “He’s not in a place mentally to go out and do something right now. I know how much good he can do in this world, but I know the struggle he goes through every single day of his life, and it’s never going to go away.”
Apparently, however, that’s changed since “Untold: Johnny Football” was filmed.
Manziel announced earlier this week that he plans to open a bar this fall in his old stomping grounds where “Johnny Football” was born at Texas A&M in College Station.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Johnny Manziel attempted suicide after losing NFL career with Browns
