- Johnny Manziel is the subject of a new Netflix documentary, "UNTOLD: Johnny Football."
- The ex-NFL star details how his personal struggles led to the demise of his football career.
After a roller coaster of a career made him one of the biggest and most notorious names in sports, Johnny Manziel is ready to leave football — and the whole Johnny Football craze surrounding it — behind him.
The former Cleveland Browns quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner is the subject of a striking new Netflix documentary, "UNTOLD: Johnny Football," which details his rapid rise to fame and glory, the debauchery that followed him from college to the pros, and the personal struggles that ended his nascent NFL career in just two years and nearly took his life.
Now, Manziel told Insider he's ready to put that chapter of his life behind him and "let the past be the past."
"I still get a lot of questions regarding football and regarding a past career, and I want to put the whole Johnny Football thing to rest," he added. "Even though it'll never quite fully go away, at least for the majority of people in my interactions in daily life, I want to be able to put this story out there and just let it be what it is."
Manziel's ascension to the top of the football world and his subsequent demise in the pros were both well-documented — and publicized — in real time. But his newfound focus on "being open and being honest" while "not having any reservations with the struggles that you have in life," as he told Insider, casts his story in a new light.
Manziel wasn't equipped to navigate the fame that came with his unprecedented success
A Texas native, Manziel was just a teenager when he was thrust into the spotlight thanks to an outstanding freshman season at Texas A&M. He led the Aggies to an impressive 11-2 record on the year and a resounding victory in the Cotton Bowl Classic, breaking record after record earning the moniker "Johnny Football" as the season progressed.
Perhaps most notably, Manziel became the first-ever freshman to win the Heisman Trophy — college football's most prestigious individual award — at the end of the season, mere days after his 20th birthday. The unprecedented honor catapulted him to near-instant celebrity, and his younger sister notes in the documentary that Manziel became "a little bit larger than football at that point."
In hindsight, Manziel agrees. He told Insider that, at the time, "all I wanted to do was get famous."
Everything changed from there. Before he even turned 21, Manziel was partying with the likes of LeBron James and Drake. He was jetting down to Miami for secret merchandise signing sessions that left him with hundreds of thousands of dollars stuffed under his mattress — a move that violated the NCAA policies at the time.
Needless to say, Manziel spent his second and final season at Texas A&M with plenty of distractions off the gridiron. Still, he shined on game days, playing well enough to finish fifth in Heisman Trophy voting once the year came to a close.
But all the while, there was "a sense of joy" missing "when I was at the top," he told Insider.
After becoming an NFL quarterback, Manziel's melancholy only grew
Even through the chaos of his sophomore year, Manziel managed to leave College Station as one of the best quarterbacks ever to don maroon and white — and that legacy made him a top prospect in the pros. The Cleveland Browns selected Manziel with the 22nd pick of the 2014 NFL Draft with hopes that the then-21-year-old could be the hero their franchise long needed.
Instead, he fell short on and off the field. He said viewers of the documentary will "see a little bit more of the personal hectic side of what was really going on in my life."
"When I got to Cleveland, I wasn't in this head space to be able to just go play football," Manziel told Insider. "I was struggling to get out of bed in the morning. I was struggling to fight thoughts and feelings that I had never really had before in my life."
Without the familiarity, structure, and camaraderie built into college football, the Browns' supposed savior struggled. Soon enough, the crushing weight of expectations made him desperate to "get out of being Johnny Football," as he says in the documentary.
As photos of Manziel during his late-night escapades increasingly found their way to tabloid covers and gossip websites, it became clear he had turned to alcohol and drugs — including cocaine and OxyContin — as an escape. He lost 40 pounds in a nine-month span, spent nearly $5 million on a prolonged bender, and ignored his Bipolar Disorder after taking offense to his initial diagnosis.
"I wanted it to get as bad as humanly possible to where it made sense, and it made it seem like an excuse and an out for me," Manziel says in the documentary.
He'd successfully shed his Johnny Football persona, but he nearly killed Johnny Manziel along the way
While reflecting on this period of his life in the documentary, Manziel recognizes that he was engaging in "direct self-sabotage" in an effort "to burn this thing down." He nearly succeeded in doing so several months after purchasing a firearm.
"The plan was to take my life," Manziel says in the documentary.
He attempted suicide, but when he pulled the trigger, his gun misfired. He says "still, to this day, I don't know what happened."
"The last thing I want is anybody to feel any type of sympathy or any of that," Manziel told Insider, adding later that "the blame falls squarely on my shoulders, and it's one that I accept."
Manziel left Los Angeles and wound up on his parents' doorstep. He's been on the road to recovery ever since, and says in the documentary that he's now "on the pursuit of happiness in a way more simplistic form than I was years ago."
He tells Insider doing so involves living "a more normal life"; spending time with family, golfing, and enjoying his new normal in Arizona. But he's not naive.
"I know that I'm still gonna walk down the street or go to a restaurant or go to a football game and people are still gonna recognize me," Manziel told Insider. "But at the end of the day, I wanna live a more normal, simplistic lifestyle now. I'm finding things that truly do make me happy without having to be in a spotlight every day."
"UNTOLD: Johnny Football" premieres on Netflix Tuesday at 3 a.m. ET.