Johnny Manziel lost his NFL career—and nearly his life—to “get out of being Johnny Football.”

A new Netflix documentary called “UNTOLD: Johnny Football” is about Johnny Manziel.
The former NFL player explains how his personal issues contributed to the end of his playing career.
Now, he’s prepared to put “the whole Johnny Football thing to rest” and start living “a more normal life,” he told Insider.
Johnny Manziel is prepared to move on from football and the Johnny Football frenzy that surrounded it after a career that has been nothing short of a roller coaster made him one of sports’ biggest and most infamous personalities.

Johnny Football,” a striking new Netflix documentary about the former Cleveland Browns quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner, details his quick ascent to fame and glory, the excess that followed him from college to the NFL, and the internal struggles that ended his nascent NFL career in just two years and almost cost him his life.

Manziel recently told Insider that he is prepared to leave that part of his life in the past and “let the past be the past.”

I want to put the whole Johnny Football thing to rest because I still get a lot of questions about football and a previous profession, he continued. “Even though it’ll never quite fully go away, at least for the majority of people in my interactions in daily life,” the author says, “I want to be able to put this story out there and just let it be what it is.”

Both Manziel’s rise to the top of the football world and his subsequent fall from grace in the professionals were thoroughly covered in real time media. To put it another way, his current emphasis on “being open and being honest” and “not having any reservations with the struggles that you have in life,” as he told Insider, gives his story a fresh perspective.

Manziel lacked the necessary skills to handle the fame that followed his remarkable success.
Manziel, a native Texan, entered the public eye as a teenager as a result of a spectacular rookie campaign at Texas A&M. He broke record after record while leading the Aggies to an outstanding 11-2 overall record and a convincing victory in the Cotton Bowl Classic. As the season went on, he earned the nickname “Johnny Football” for his accomplishments.

A few days after turning 20 years old, Manziel made history by becoming the first-ever freshman quarterback win the Heisman Trophy, the highest individual honor in college football. His younger sister says in the documentary that Manziel became “a little bit larger than football at that point” as a result of the historic honor, which propelled him to almost instant fame.

In retrospect, Manziel concurs. Insider quoted him as saying, “All I wanted to do at the time was get famous.”

From there, everything was altered. Manziel was having parties with celebrities like LeBron James and Drake before he even turned 21. He was breaking NCAA rules at the time by flying down to Miami for covert merchandise signing sessions that left him with hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden beneath his mattress.

Without a doubt, Manziel had a lot of off-field distractions during his second and last season at Texas A&M. Even yet, he excelled during game days and played well enough to place sixth in the Heisman Trophy vote at the end of the season.

But he continued to feel “a sense of joy” lacking from “when I was at the top,” as he admitted to Insider.

He continued, “I still get a lot of questions about football and a prior career, so I want to put the whole Johnny Football thing to rest. According to the author, “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 depression only intensified once he was hired as an NFL quarterback.

Manziel managed to depart College Station as one of the best quarterbacks ever to don the maroon and white, despite the mayhem of his sophomore year, and that legacy made him a top prospect in the pros. In the 2014 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns took Manziel with the 22nd overall choice in the hopes that the 21-year-old may be the hero his team had been waiting for.




He was unsuccessful both on and off the field. The documentary, he claimed, will let viewers “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 said to Insider. “In the morning, it was difficult for me to get out of bed. I was fighting thoughts and emotions I had never really experienced before in my life.

The alleged savior of the Browns struggled without the comfort, structure, and camaraderie inherent in college football. He eventually became desperate to “get out of being Johnny Football,” as he explains in the documentary, due to the heavy weight of expectations.