Manziel Demoted To Third-String For Incident over Bye Week

On Tuesday, Mike Pettine the head coach for the Cleveland Browns named Josh McCown as the starting quarterback for this week’s game over Johnny Manziel.

One week after taking the starting job over, Manziel has not only lost it, but has been demoted to third string for the game on Monday night against the Baltimore Ravens.

He lost his starting role after posts on social media surfaced earlier in the week that showed Manziel allegedly partying over last weekend, which was a bye week for the Browns and the quarterback has returned to Texas.

Pettine said that everyone knows what happened, knows what was posted on the social media sites and that led to great disappointment and frustration.

Pettine said it violated the trust the team had put in Manziel during the bye week coming out of the game against Pittsburgh that he started and played well.

The decisions by Manziel off the gridiron this season cost him chances to establish himself as a starter.

The decision by Pettine to take away his starting role came due to a series of missteps by Manziel off the field. Pettine said that Kevin O’Connell the quarterbacks coach and John DeFilippo the offensive coordinator spoke to Manziel prior to the bye week making it clear how they expected the quarterback to handle himself in the correct way.

However, Pettine said during the bye week it was not thought of as being a test, but it has certainly ended up being just that.

Pettine said the same two coaches spoke to Manziel after they learned of the posting of a video on the Internet.

Pettine added that he kept Jimmy Haslam the owner and Ray Farmer the general manager informed during the process of making a decision, but called the his decision to demote Manziel strictly a coaching one.

Pettine said that the improvements on the field by Manziel have been tremendous from last season to this but he needs more time on the field to demonstrate consistently he can be successful in understanding what it takes at this level.

The team, added Pettine, would support Manziel in every way possible, but for now, the team is going with McCown as the starter moving forward.

Manziel was named the starter by the Browns after he had 372 yards passing in the Browns loss to Pittsburgh 30-9 on November 15, prior to the bye week.

At that time he was told by Pettine that he had to properly represent the team and Manziel said he would not do anything during the bye week to embarrass the team cause a distraction.