Job Shadowing: Manziel mostly watches on Day 1

He was the voice in Johnny Manziel’s ear throughout practice on Sunday and his sounding board when he sat back and watched his fellow quarterbacks work in one-on-one drills.

As Day 1 of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ training camp unfolded, you hope that Manziel and Dan Morrison will get along, because they’re going to be seeing a lot of each other in the weeks and months to come.

At points on Sunday, Morrison, the Ticats’ quarterbacks coach, looked like he and Manziel were attached at the hip. He was there to offer feedback and answer questions that the team’s newest QB had through the first hour or so of practice.

When starter Jeremiah Masoli and the team’s four other quarterbacks broke for one-on-ones, Manziel watched with Morrison and they chatted. A veteran coach with a penchant for building productive quarterbacks — at the University of Hawaii from 1999 to 2007 under head coach June Jones, his QBs broke 35 different NCAA records — Morrison spent Day 1 trying to figure out Manziel.

“You wait and see who they are,” Morrison said. “Oftentimes it has little to do with what their background is. It has more to do with their temperament and personality and their psychology. How you speak to them, how you teach them.

“Some people, you can coach to what they do wrong. Some people, you have to coach to what they do right. You have to figure that out about them. He seems like he’s fine either way. He’s pretty strong, a strong kid. That’ll be just getting to know each other the next few days.”


MANZIEL MANIA
» Timeline: Tracing Manziel’s path to Canada
» Ticats’ new signing touches down in Hamilton
» On Demand: Manziel’s introductory press conference

» First Look: Manziel puts on his stripes

 


As Manziel takes on the uphill battle of learning a CFL offence for the first time, signing the day before training camp opened, he’ll come to learn that Morrison’s will be the face that he sees the most.

“It felt better being out here than it did when I was laying in bed last night, going over the playbook,” Manziel said.

“When we went to the meetings (on Saturday), I felt super overwhelmed and I started to get a little too hard on myself because (the offence) is different.

“The routes are different…the footwork, the certain windows that you hit and how quick they happen. That was different. I was feeling a little overwhelmed.”

Manziel said the way that Jones set up the practice was helpful to him.

“It’s nice for a guy like me to be able to get out there and sit behind and hear what the play is and get the concept down, see how it happens from some of the other guys,” he said.

“It was good to put the jersey back on but more than anything I think it was good to really see some of the things develop that I didn’t understand in the playbook last night.”

For all of the hype that will come with a Manziel-type signing in the CFL, Day 1 of the Ticats camp provided a heavy dose of reality. The learning curve for a CFL rookie quarterback is tremendous. As fast a learner as Morrison says Manziel is, it will take time. When Jones discusses the complexity of the CFL game — an adjustment he made less than a year ago when he came aboard as head coach — he often compares it to trying to read in another language. When it all starts to look foreign, Morrison will be Manziel’s rock, or Rosetta Stone.

“I’m not waiting. He’s got to catch up . . . We’ve got plenty of time for camp. I’d say in two and a half weeks he’ll have a handle on everything.”

June Jones on Manziel’s learning curve

Johnny Manziel had his first practice since signing with the Ticats on Saturday (Kevin Sousa/CFL.ca)

“In my own mind, that was going to be my role today,” Morrison said. “Stay with him, (tell him), ‘Don’t go out there and throw right now. Just stay with me and listen and see what’s going on.’ That was our first day. It’ll progress over the next few days.”

Comfort will likely be a fleeting feeling for Manziel this week. Jones gave him the option of observing at points on Sunday, but that option will quickly disappear.

“I’m not waiting. He’s got to catch up,” Jones said. “We’ve got guys in there and he will. We’ve got plenty of time for camp. I’d say in two and a half weeks he’ll have a handle on everything.”

There was some familiarity there on Sunday for Morrison. As the associate head coach and QBs coach at Southern Methodist University in 2012, he was up in the booth for his team’s opening game against Texas A&M and had to quickly try to figure out the opposing quarterback. It was Manziel, making his NCAA debut.

“He was a guy running around and making throws that were unbelievable,” Morrison said.

“I was upstairs sitting next to our defensive coordinator and he didn’t know him either. No one knew him at that point. (The defensive coordinator) was just so frustrated, because we thought we had this guy, no we don’t have this guy. It was a very frustrating day for him.”

“Manziel set A&M freshman records with 294 passing yards and four touchdowns in that game. He also rushed for 124 yards and SMU was blown out, 48-3.

“Then he realized three or four games later, ‘Oh, everybody has that problem with him,’” Morrison said. “We didn’t even know who he was at that time and he was phenomenal.”