O’Leary: Als, Manziel readying for tough back end of season
Are you ready to see some Johnny Football?
Is Johnny ready?
The Alouettes head into Week 15 at a league-worst 3-9 with their highlight of the season — a two-game win streak — broken into pieces at the hands of the BC Lions. Amidst the rubble from that loss is the play of Antonio Pipkin. He was under siege from the Lions’ D-line all night, taking seven sacks and throwing a pair of pick-sixes in the fourth quarter that served as extra-long nails in his team’s coffin.
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It’s yet to be made official, but CFL.ca’s Chris O’Leary has a feeling it’s only a matter of time before Johnny Manziel takes over the starting job again. (Johany Jutras, CFL.ca)
Johnny Manziel stood on the sidelines throughout the game, watching as the same problems that have plagued the Als this season contributed to another loss. Stomach flu kept him out of all three days of practice last week, but that didn’t stop him from speaking up on walkthrough day, where he told reporters he was frustrated by his role with the team since clearing concussion protocol.
Going into the final six games of the season, Manziel will probably get the chance that he quasi-demanded last week. He may have been out of place to say what he did, but he wasn’t wrong. There was a lot given up for him (two first-round picks, a great defensive lineman in Jamaal Westerman and a talented receiver in Chris Williams) and as he pointed out, in the words of coach Mike Sherman upon the trade, this has to work and this will work.
Those two things, what was given up in the deal and the promise of the coach, make for an awkward situation. Vernon Adams Jr. went through it upon Manziel’s arrival in July and Pipkin felt it this past week. There is no shorter quarterback leash in the league than what a Montreal QB not named Johnny Manziel plays with. With every mistake, every sack suffered, with every deficit, the speculation from the broadcasters and the rumbling from the fans has gained momentum. You have to essentially be perfect to keep those factors at bay. The catch-22 here though is that in the vast majority of their games this season, it wouldn’t matter who your quarterback is.
Adams and Pipkin saw that in their most recent starts. When defences are rolling over your offensive line, your offensive production evaporates and the likelihood of mistakes to be made goes up.
Manziel is no different in that regard than Drew Willy, Matthew Shiltz, Jeff Mathews, Adams or Pipkin. Barring further injury, it’s safe to assume he’ll get what he asked for and he’ll be the guy for the Alouettes for the rest of this season. Is he ready for what awaits? The remainder of the team’s schedule is far from easy. They get Winnipeg, Saskatchewan and Calgary before playing a home-and-home with Toronto, then wrap up their season in Hamilton, where Manziel’s CFL journey started the day before training camp.
The playoffs are unlikely for them, but there’s still a tense tone to this final third of the Alouettes’ season. Manziel decided to rock the boat at the one sustained moment of success his team has had this season. He gets what he wants, but he’ll have to live with what comes with that.
