Earlier this month, Browns left tackle Joe Thomas said that he thought quarterback Johnny Manziel “lost probably a lot of trust” in the locker room with the way he handled his brief ascension to the starting job last season and that he hoped to be “blown away” by Manziel’s commitment to football when the team started offseason work.
We’re in the second week of that work and things seem to be trending in the right direction. Thomas said that it is “pretty apparent” that Manziel realized how important football is to him based on the work that he’s putting in now.
“Towards the end of the season, even when he wasn’t there, obviously, missing meetings and practice and things like that, it’s just little things, and when you’re a quarterback it’s the little things that are the most important,” Thomas said on NFL Network, via the Akron Beacon Journal. “I think those were the things that were apparent by the end of the year, and I think he saw them in himself based on the things that he said right after the season and the steps and the actions that he took in January, February and March. To see the guy in the building right now is night and day from where he was last year in his commitment, and I think he has a bright future ahead of him.”
It remains to be seen whether more April commitment will relate to improved performance on the field, but it’s a necessary step for that improvement to happen.
