Johnny Manziel, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback at Texas A&M, still has three more seasons of NCAA eligibility, which means he might not make it to the NFL until 2016. But he’s tweeting like a man who plans to enter the draft next year, the first year when he’ll be NFL-eligible.
Early Sunday morning, Manziel wrote on Twitter, “I can’t wait to leave College Station.” Manziel quickly deleted that tweet and replaced it with one that said he loves Texas A&M, but he also urged people to “walk a day in my shoes,” the latest in a series of public statements in which Manziel suggested that he finds college life rough.
If Manziel isn’t happy in college, he’s probably already planning his jump to the NFL. And when he does jump, he’ll be a fascinating prospect: Manziel isn’t the prototypical NFL pocket passer, but NFL teams are increasingly discovering ways to make the most of the talents of quarterbacks who aren’t prototypical NFL pocket passers. There will be questions about Manziel’s height and about how well his college accomplishments can translate to the next level. Those questions will resemble the questions about Russell Wilson heading into the 2012 draft, and there are surely plenty of NFL general managers now kicking themselves for passing on Wilson before the Seahawks grabbed him in the third round.
Opinions about Manziel entering the draft may be all over the map, but a year from now, we can probably expect Manziel to have left College Station, and be getting ready for an NFL training camp.
