Maybe Johnny Manziel’s football career is still on life support.
The Canadian Football League’s Hamilton Tiger-Cats, who recently hired and fired disgraced Baylor coach Art Briles, worked out Manziel last week, TSN reported. They didn’t immediately sign Manziel.
“Too many red flags,” one source told TSN.
Not so fast. The Tiger-Cats “remain extremely interested in Manziel, and the team could still sign him,” a source told Pro Football Talk.
Hamilton is 0-8 this season with former Falcons and college coach June Jones in his first year in charge. Manziel hasn’t played anywhere since the end of the 2015 season when the Browns released him.
The Tiger-Cats own Manziel’s CFL rights, and thus will have the first crack at signing him, should his agent declare he wants to play in the league. They also own the negotiating rights to Colin Kaepernick and Robert Griffin III.
Though Manziel wasn’t on a team, he was suspended for the first four NFL games of last season because of a league substance abuse policy violation. The NFL might have banned him further for his involvement in a domestic violence case, had any team decided to pursue him.
Manziel, 24, was a first-round pick in 2014 but all of the concerns about his off-field behavior at Texas A&M were quickly realized in Cleveland. The 2012 Heisman Trophy winner appeared in 15 games for the Browns in two seasons.
Trying to hire Briles, the disgraced coach who harbored sexual predators on his Baylor roster, was a public relations disaster for the Tiger-Cats and the CFL.
Maybe the franchise will decide Johnny Football is worth the risk, after all.