Manziel on Scandal, Suicidal Thought

Johnny Manziel’s rise and fall transcended soccer — and he’s pulling again the curtain on his controversies and psychological well being struggles for the primary time in Netflix’s Untold: Johnny Football.

Texas A&M followers might keep in mind Manziel’s school profession received off to a rocky begin when he was arrested weeks earlier than his first sport because the football-crazy college’s quarterback. The incident marked the primary of many controversies to return.

“I don’t have much of a recollection other than waking up shirtless on a concrete bench in Bryan County Jail,” Manziel, who was booked for a faux ID after a struggle, informed Netflix cameras. “[A&M’s statement] said, ‘That wasn’t very normal for my character.’ … I guess looking back now, it was normal for my character.”

It wasn’t lengthy into the 2012 season, nevertheless, earlier than Manizel proved that he might carry out on the sphere no matter his laborious partying. As a consequence, his coaches, as they later admitted, let him get away with no matter he wished — and “Johnny Football” was born.

After main the Aggies to a stunning victory in opposition to No. 1 ranked Alabama in November, Manziel recalled being handled like a star on and off A&M’s College Station campus. “You walk off the field like a f—king G,” he stated.

One month later, Manziel turned a family title as the primary freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, awarded yearly to the nation’s greatest school soccer participant. While his excellent play introduced A&M a windfall in cash and publicity — Manziel’s Heisman win was estimated to deliver the college $37 million value of free PR — he rapidly grew annoyed that he wasn’t seeing any of that cash himself.

Johnny Manziel Planned to Take His Life After -5 Million Bender — Johnny Manziel. MEGA

“There were two times throughout the season where I had to sign hundreds and hundreds of autographs [for] our donors,” Manziel stated of the occasions the college held to lift funds for a brand new stadium. “I was tired of not having any money and I sure as hell saw 45 million No. 2 A&M Adidas jerseys sold. It didn’t make any sense, and I had a bone to pick.”

Manziel after which–greatest good friend Nate Fitch opted to disregard NCAA guidelines that school athletes couldn’t revenue off of their very own likenesses and commenced promoting autographs in January 2013. They made $30,000 on their first cope with an unnamed “king of all autographs,” who Fitch alleged Alex Rodriguez vouched for throughout a telephone name.

The two BFFs subsequently started partying with A-listers together with Drake, Rick Ross, Lebron James, Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake. “None of them could believe [Johnny] was there,” Fitch stated.

As a results of A&M advising freshmen to not speak to any media, Fitch fielded questions on Manziel’s sudden wealth, mendacity about his household being from “oil money.” The two males made greater than $100,000 — they cut up the cash 80/20 — earlier than the NCAA started to analyze Manziel. Fitch and Manziel’s makes an attempt to cowl their tracks, which included buying and selling the money for checks from Manziel’s grandfather, proved considerably profitable as Manziel was suspended for under half a sport and so they continued their autograph enterprise through the 2013-2014 season.

A&M, nevertheless, went 8-4 throughout Manziel’s sophomore season and the quarterback caught loads of warmth for his more and more erratic conduct, which included skipping follow and displaying up hungover. “F—k your practice. I’m the best player in the country,” Manziel recalled considering. “Whether people like to say it or not, I was bigger than College Station.”

After the season ended, Manziel declared for the NFL draft — and Fitch and Manziel rapidly had a falling out when the athlete signed with skilled agent Erik Burkhardt.

“We had originally told [Nate] that there wasn’t going to be a guy with me on a day-to-day,” Manziel stated. “When we told him that wasn’t gonna happen, kind of thing like he felt his role in the whole world was diminished kind of pulled away. I don’t think we’ve spoken again since then. … I felt terrible about it, but at the same time because of what my track record was, they weren’t going to allow me to do that.”

As he ready for the NFL mix, a pre-draft exercise wherein groups decide former school gamers on their skills, Burkhardt tried to maintain Manziel on the straight and slender, drug testing him weekly. “I was really, really good until the week before the combine in Indy, and I finally just broke,” Manziel stated, admitting he went to a celebration with rappers and actresses in L.A. “I woke up in a hotel room, and didn’t know how I got there.”

While Burkhardt wished Manziel’s dad to faux a hospital journey to purchase Manziel’s a while, the soccer participant was assured he might drink sufficient water to get the medication out of his system — which he claimed was his technique whereas in school. Burkhardt later discovered the Aggies’ fourth-string QB was submitting his personal clear urine for Manziel.

Despite the shut name, Manziel handed the take a look at and almost solidified a cope with the Houston Texans earlier than he received drunk on the proprietor’s nation membership. Manziel was finally picked twenty second by the Cleveland Browns within the 1st spherical.

“When I got everything that I wanted, I think I was the most empty that I’ve ever felt inside,” Manziel stated, noting that he didn’t really feel any connection to his teammates in Cleveland.

Manziel admitted to watching zero sport movie and struggling on and off the sphere. “I would sit in my condo in Cleveland downtown and just feel like it was the only place that [I could] get away from everybody and anything,” he stated. “And I would look out those windows, every day I just felt empty. I went from one fish bowl city to another and I wanted nothing to do with football.”

In 2015, his substance abuse points spiraled once more, and after he missed a sport in early 2016 as a result of he was partying in Las Vegas, he was formally minimize by the Browns. Manziel subsequently went on what he described as the largest bender but, getting arrested after a struggle along with his then-girlfriend Colleen Crowley.

“Throughout that relationship, I was unfaithful. You know, we get into a heated, heated argument. You know she’s trying to jump out of the car and …” he stated earlier than trailing off.

Manziel was dropped by his agent and estranged from his household.

“[It was] the first point in my life where I really ramped up my drug use to a constant, daily thing. I was mostly doing a lot of coke and taking Oxys,” he stated. “I went from 215 pounds in January to 175 pounds by September. The wires in my head seem very twisted. I got diagnosed Bipolar, Then I felt like it was the same thing as being called an alcoholic or a drug addict.”

Manziel described his monthslong bender, on which he spent an astonishing $5 million, as “direct self-sabotage trying to burn this thing down.”

“I had planned to do everything that I wanted to do at that point in my life — spend as much money as I possibly could and then my plan was to take my life,” he stated. “Months prior, I went and bought a gun that I knew I was going to use. I wanted 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. Still to this day, don’t know what happened, but the gun just clicked on me.”

While Manziel concluded that he “couldn’t fix” what occurred “with Colleen, the NFL, with A&M” and “didn’t have much of a relationship with my family,” he returned to Texas.

According to his sister, Manziel remains to be a piece in progress.

“I think people do, maybe, worry about me sometimes, but I mean, that’s natural,” he concluded. “You know, I’ve given them reason[s] to do that.”

If you or somebody you already know is in emotional misery or contemplating suicide, name the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

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