CLEVELAND, Ohio (TheOBR.com) Good morning, Cleveland Browns fans!
I actually watched some soccer last night, as the USA took on Bosnia and Herzegovina out in San Francisco. Maybe it was the TV production, or perhaps it was the level of play, but I actually found myself engrossed in and enjoying the game. Of course, I don’t know the players well (or at all), but it was nice seeing a team sport where half of the action and 95% of the internet discourse doesn’t revolve around a single person under center.
I looked out on the wires this morning and saw basically nothing but quarterback articles, a state of affairs I discussed at length yesterday. So, naturally, I should live up to my own standards and write about a rookie tight end or something akin to that. Unfortunately, I made the decision last night to go out and pound a few beers with the OBR gang, and then decided to stay up for a while and watch soccer, so I am far too far behind and addled to do anything but take cheap shots at the Browns’ eternal source of roster despair.
Save me from myself, Browns fans. I can’t stop.
There are Browns stories that go away, Browns stories that fade into the background, and Browns stories that apparently get buried in a shallow grave under a Taco Bell drive-thru and crawl back out every few summers to demand we all talk about them again. Johnny Manziel is one of those stories. I am sorry. I do not make the rules. I merely sit here with coffee and a laptop, committing this nonsense to the internet because my life choices remain questionable.
The latest round started innocently enough, or at least as innocently as anything involving the 2014 Browns draft class can start. Joel Bitonio, announcing his retirement after 12 seasons in Cleveland, mentioned that he was drafted the same year as Johnny Manziel and roomed with him. Then came the line: “I learned some things not to do from him.” There it was. One sentence. A smile. A laugh. A perfect little veteran-lineman dagger from a guy who spent 178 regular-season games doing the job while half the franchise around him tried to find its shoes.
Bitonio earned that joke. The man was a second-round pick from Nevada, played 6,481 consecutive offensive snaps from 2017 through 2023, made seven consecutive Pro Bowls, landed on five All-Pro teams, and wrote that after 12 seasons wearing No. 75 he had officially decided to retire. If anyone gets to take one parting shot at the Browns’ old quarterback circus, it is the left guard who kept showing up through regimes, rebuilds, rebooted rebuilds, quarterback plans, emergency quarterback plans, and whatever else we called those autumns to make ourselves feel better.
But the Cleveland Browns quarterback commentary circus continues. Someone found an eight-month-old podcast clip, where he reportedly said he would “hate Cleveland forever” and was “rooting for 0-16 seasons every season.” Then, after that was exploited by a local radio station for ears, Manziel posted that “Tom Brady couldn’t have won with our roster from 2015”. Well, then. Good luck with that. The 2015 Browns roster was not exactly the 1985 Bears wearing orange helmets, but if your defense is “the roster was bad,” it would help if your own side of the ledger did not include eight starts, a 2-6 record, and a professional preparation plan that seemed to involve vibes, nightlife, and whatever the opposite of Bitonio was doing.
This is where Browns fans get trapped, because two things can be true, and our much-abused internet brains hate that. The Browns have absolutely failed quarterbacks. Repeatedly. Artistically. With the dedication of a Renaissance painter working in burnt sienna and despair. They failed some with bad coaching, some with bad rosters, some with organizational churn, and some because the whole operation from 1999 forward occasionally resembled a Keystone Kops routine with shoulder pads. But Johnny Manziel also failed Johnny Manziel. You can acknowledge the Browns’ mess without pretending the guy drafted No. 22 overall had no role in his own two-year flameout.
That is why Bitonio’s line landed. It was not mean, really. It was not some long-delayed airing of laundry. It was just the contrast in one sentence. One guy learned from Joe Thomas. The other is still arguing with Cleveland on podcasts and social media a decade later. If you are looking for the difference between a franchise pillar and a franchise cautionary tale, there you go. Nice and tidy. Even a webdork can follow it.
Maybe I underestimate Manziel. He’s doing MMA fights now, and probably knows how to play the heel, and would like to gain some Cleveland–based viewers, hopeful to see the old scourge take a punch in the face. But if you’ve hit the point where your primary appeal to audiences is to get punched in the schnozz, it might be time to admit a bit of your own culpability.
So, yes, Johnny Manziel is back in the discourse because, apparently, we did something in a previous life and are still paying it off. But the lesson from the whole mess is not really about Johnny. It is about Bitonio. Show up. Do the work. Be accountable. Last long enough that when you finally toss one joke over your shoulder on the way out, everyone knows you earned it.
Have a good one! GO BROWNS!
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Cleveland Browns News and Rumors 7/1/26: Enough With the Quarterback Soup
THE LIFT
Positive news from the world of sports and beyond…
With July 4th fireworks coming, GoodGoodGood has a terrific item on volunteers reading aloud and playing music for shelter pets at Bradshaw Animal Shelter in Sacramento. The shelter has held these comfort sessions for six years, asking volunteers to sit beside anxious animals, read a book, strum a guitar, or sing while the pops and booms rattle outside.
I like this one because it is small and practical and kind. Nobody is solving every problem in the world. They are just showing up with a camp chair and a calm voice for a dog or cat that does not understand why the sky is exploding. Sometimes the lift is not a grand gesture. Sometimes it is sitting next to somebody scared and making the night a little less awful. Football could use more of that, too, although I am not sure reading Goodnight Moon to the quarterback depth chart would help.
WRAPPING UP
When not wondering how Johnny Manziel discourse became evergreen content, Barry McBride is the Publisher and Founder of the OBR and bloviates this nonsense every morning. You can follow him on Twitter @barrymcbride or write him at barry@theobr.com if you are so compelled.
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