The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks (32 page)

“We got punched in the mouth today, and it wasn’t fun.”

During the game, CBS reported that Manziel was bothered by an injured hand. It was actually a banged-up thumb.

“It’s been a factor throughout the past couple of weeks,” he said after being asked how much, if at all, the thumb was a factor. He added that it wasn’t the reason A&M lost.

Later that day, two other contenders, Baylor quarterback Bryce Petty (another Whitfield client) and Oregon QB Marcus Mariota, both struggled, too, as their teams each got upset. The one guy from the front of the Heisman race who didn’t have a rough Saturday was Jameis Winston. His team scored 80 on a dreadful Idaho squad and was steamrolling every opponent en route to a BCS National Title bid. With Petty’s struggles, the Seminoles redshirt freshman took over the national lead in QB rating at 194.50. The bigger news surrounding Jameis Winston’s day: Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs told AP that he likely wouldn’t make a decision on whether the FSU QB would be charged until after Thanksgiving in a sexual-assault investigation that had surfaced first via
TMZ
in the previous ten days but stemmed from a complaint filed with the Tallahassee Police Department back in December 2012.

The matter of the timing with Winston’s case became an awkward subplot to his investigation: Should Heisman electors vote for
Winston with the possibility he could get charged days later? Some Heisman voters had said in recent years that “character” is considered in their ballot, even though they don’t really know these guys all that well, if at all. In 2012, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te’o was touted by many as the ultimate “character” guy, but a little more than a month after the Heisman ceremony, a ton of questions emerged about his character after the well-chronicled story of his commitment to the deceased love of his life took a bizarre turn when it came to light that his late girlfriend had never actually existed—Te’o had been the victim of an elaborate hoax, a revelation he did not promptly disclose.

Winston, Manziel, and McCarron were among the six finalists invited to New York for the Heisman presentation. Winston got some good news leading up to the trip north: Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs concluded that “no charges will be filed” after an investigation of the case, explaining in a press conference that the “timing [of the case] has not been driven by Heisman demands or a football schedule.”

At each of the Heisman media-availability sessions—one on Friday and two more on Saturday—the Alabama native adeptly handled questions, including a few that touched on the investigation and the magnitude of it.

“I knew I did nothing wrong,” Winston said. “That’s why I knew I could respect the process, and I’d eventually be vindicated. It was more about me being silent for my family, because I didn’t want to put my family in that situation.”

The young QB actually managed the weekend’s media sessions much better than the adults in the FSU PR department did. When faced with any seemingly tough question, Winston was poised, polite, and kept eye contact. He never looked flustered or put-off or agitated. You couldn’t say the same for the Seminole Sports Information Director who stood a few feet behind him. (At the Friday-afternoon session, a Noles SID person pulled Winston away from reporters after a rather innocuous question, and the FSU contingent cut short the scheduled availability before being brought back to the media area about twenty minutes later.)

Winston had a curious dynamic that often got skewed under the magnifying lens of a TV camera. In less formal media windows, he came across as engaging, playful, and more comfortable in his own skin than anyone in the room. However, when those moments became prime-time TV moments, he seemed to lose control, drifting toward playing to the lowest common denominator, acting like a goof, which often rubbed people the wrong way and created its own challenges for the FSU staff.

Winston called the month leading up to the Heisman his “humbling moment.” He said he’d learned he couldn’t go out anymore, and that his coach Jimbo Fisher had told him, “For you to be a man, the kid in you must die.”

Manziel suddenly wasn’t the biggest deal in the room—at least not that weekend. He was still getting A-list offers. Two weeks earlier, A&M turned down a chance for him to be a guest again on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

“They tried to entice him by saying Jennifer Aniston was going to be on the show with him,” said an A&M PR staffer. “I don’t think they know, she’s probably a bit out of his demo.” Manziel looked perfectly comfortable being in the background in New York. He conceded that he felt like “an old sophomore. I feel like I’ve been in college forever.” Observing the media swarm around Winston, Manziel said he was impressed by how the kid had handled the situation.

Four months earlier, Winston had caused a bit of a stir when he was asked a question at FSU’s pre-season media day about “Manziel disease,” and he replied:

“If I ever get Manziel disease, I want all of you to smack me in the head with your microphones.” The comment—even with the context that it was in response to how the question had been framed—didn’t sit well with the Manziel camp, but the A&M star appeared to have no trouble embracing Winston.

“I had to go through some controversy. I had to go through some things,” Manziel said. “To see him at such a young age be able to put his head down and focus on his teammates and where they are and where they’re headed, I do give him a lot of credit for that. With
all the scrutiny and everything that he’s under, I feel like he’s done a tremendous job of focusing on his team and his family and what matters most.”

Winston ended up running away with the Heisman voting, winning by the seventh-biggest margin in the award’s seventy-nine-year history. He received 668 first-place votes, even though he didn’t appear at all on 115 Heisman ballots. Manziel got fifth place—behind Winston, McCarron, Northern Illinois QB Jordan Lynch, and Boston College running back Andre Williams.

“I can’t explain and say enough how truly intelligent he is, how instinctive he is,” Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher replied upon being asked what quality impressed him most about Winston. “The game makes sense to him. He always wants to know why he’s having success. If he throws a touchdown, he has to understand it, so he can repeat it.”

Winston wasted little time trying to get a better understanding of how winning the Heisman could change his life. He’d been picking Manziel’s brain for a few days already.

“We had a really good talk Thursday night at dinner,” Manziel said. “I wasn’t prepared for it. I don’t know if you really can be.

“It’s going to be a whirlwind for a little bit, but he’ll get used to it. I didn’t ever want to be a different person. There are things you have to adapt to and get used to, because this is how life is going to be. No matter how bad you want things to be back to the way they were before and live a normal life, those days went out the window a long time ago for me. I’ve accepted that fact, and I’m fine with it, and life’s good.”

Manziel’s best advice: “Continue to be yourself—just be you, and try not to let this thing change you.”

MANZIEL
’
S COLLEGE FINALE CAME
on New Year’s Eve against one of the sweetest stories of 2013—a 10–3 Duke team that, after years of being a punch line, made it to the ACC Title Game. The Aggies limped into the Chick-fil-A Bowl with consecutive losses at LSU and Missouri.

“It was a taxing year physically and mentally,” Kevin Sumlin
said on the eve of the game. Weeks before the bowl game, Sumlin shook up his offense by promoting Spavital, making him the Aggies’ new play-caller, taking over for Clarence McKinney. The move was expected to ramp up the tempo for A&M even more, with Spavital coaching from the sidelines and more in sync with Manziel. It helped that Manziel had time to heal after sustaining nagging injuries throughout the second half of the season.

“Johnny got his stinger back,” proclaimed A&M defensive coordinator Mark Snyder a few days before the bowl. “I think he lost it after the Auburn game.” That 45–41 defeat in late October ended whatever national-title hopes the Aggies had had. Manziel threw for 454 yards and 4 TDs but had to leave the fourth quarter for a few plays after a shoulder injury. In the aftermath, Manziel still produced big numbers, throwing 13 touchdowns over the next three games before facing LSU and Missouri, but Snyder noticed a different side of the play-making QB at practice: “I kept saying to him, ‘Man, that’s not you. You don’t ever lose your confidence. C’mon, talk shit to me.’ ”

Manziel admitted that the Auburn loss was “really deflating. That just stung for a long time, especially offensively. We just kind of lost our confidence after that and never really could get it back.”

Boarding one of the team buses for what would be his last full practice as a college player, Manziel was back to being himself. A grinning Manziel walked past Sumlin seated in the first row. The quarterback was followed by a bleary-eyed teammate with a gray hoodie draped over his face. Apparently, the young teammate, a freshman, had had a rough time keeping up with Manziel the night before.

“This is your fault,” Sumlin said through a smile to his star, nodding toward the young player.

Manziel, who earlier in the month had turned twenty-one, had a verbal rapport with his coaches that often sounded as if someone in Hollywood must’ve scripted it. When Sumlin reminded him to be on his best behavior, because he had to “impress thirty-two owners and head coaches.”

Manziel corrected him. “Thirty-one.”

A few hours before kickoff, Manziel’s old coach, Kliff Kingsbury, said he wished he was in Atlanta to “watch the last Johnny Football game. He’s gonna put on a show for the ages. He’s going to be the first pick after tonight.”

Manziel’s show, in a twisted way, was aided by A&M’s own inept defense, which allowed Duke to jump out to a stunning 38–17 halftime lead. That provided Manziel with ample opportunity for more heroics to bail out the Aggies. He proceeded to hit on 12 of 13 passes, leading A&M on 4 consecutive touchdown drives, which, coupled with teammate Toney Hurd’s pick-six, was enough to give the Aggies a 52–48 comeback win.

Manziel celebrated with teammates that night before going from coast to coast, meeting with LeBron James’s marketing people in Miami and then flying out to Los Angeles to meet up with Whitfield and appear on ESPN for the BCS Title Game. The matchup: Jameis Winston’s number-one-ranked Florida State Seminoles against number two Auburn. FSU was trying to end the SEC’s run of seven consecutive BCS titles.

JANUARY 6, 2014
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Whitfield, Manziel, and Logan Thomas, the other QB in Southern California to start training with Whitfield to get ready for the NFL Draft, watched from the 20-yard-line on the Auburn sideline and had a great view as Jameis Winston made history. For 58 minutes and 41 seconds Winston looked rusty, sluggish, and confused. But his
team, which at one point trailed 21–3, was down 31–27 when they took over possession at their own 20.

Winston had a simple message to his teammates before the first play of the biggest drive of his life: “This is what we came here for.”

Seven plays later, the Noles had taken the lead after Winston found wideout Kelvin Benjamin in the back of the end zone on a 2-yard pass with 13 seconds remaining to cap the biggest comeback in BCS history. On the drive, Winston completed 6 of 7 passes.

“It’s the best football game he has played all year, and I’ll tell you why, because for three quarters he was up and down, and he fought,” Coach Jimbo Fisher said. “And, just like any great player, some nights you don’t have it.

“When you can go back like the great ones do—‘It’s not my night, but we’ve got a chance to win this ball game, it’s in the fourth quarter, I’ve got one or two touches left, and you can take your team down the field and lead them to victory’—that’s what a great player is to me. Very few can do it when it’s not their night. And to pull it out in the atmosphere and environment and with what was on the line tonight, to me, if that’s not a great player, then I don’t know what one is.”

Perhaps the craziest part of it all was that the ending played out almost exactly as Trent Dilfer had predicted it would over two years earlier at the Elite 11, when in front of ESPN’s TV cameras, he told Winston:

“It’s going to come down to third-and-7 in the fourth quarter, down by four, and they’re going to keep you in the pocket. They’re not going to let you be fast and quick and all that. And that’s going to be a mistake, because you’re going to beat ’em here [pointing to his head].”

Only thing Dilfer got wrong: it was actually a third-and-8.

 
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