Has ESPN already destroyed Johnny Manziels career?

So it looks like the day has finally come… Johnny “Football” Manziel has made it to the NFL draft and was selected by the Cleveland Browns with the 22nd overall pick. Now we can finally expect to see ESPN switch back to talking about the rest of the sports world…or can we. For the past 6 months it seems like ESPN has been the head conductor of this never ending Johnny Manziel publicity train. Things had gotten so ridiculous that a day could not go by without Manziel’s name being brought up at least once.  The sad part about all this publicity  is that ESPN doesn’t even realize that they may have already destroyed Manziel’s career.

Now before you get too upset about the statement I just made lets look into the parallels between Manziel and Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow is the perfect NFL player to compare to Johnny Manziel due to their very similar college playing style, Heisman trophy  awards, draft selection numbers (22nd and 25th), and of course their mass amount of ESPN coverage.  Tim Tebow came into the NFL as the 25th overall pick to the Denver Broncos and many analyst to this day believe that Tebow was one of the best college football players ever. With such accolades and high regards it hard to believe that Tim Tebow couldn’t find a roll as a back up or even 3rd string quarter back  for one team. A lot of blame as to why he is not currently on a team falls on the shoulders of ESPN. Looking back to 2010. ESPN brought the media circus into town as soon as Tebow started playing well and began documenting every aspect of his life , taking attention away from the team that he was playing for. Once all of the hype died down and Tebow became a free agent, no team wanted anything to do with him because they knew about the media baggage that he brought with him.

Fast forward to 2014 and the media is already flocking around Manziel and he hasn’t thrown one NFL pass yet. This amount of attention can only work to Manziel’s demise. At the end of the day if Manziel does not play at a superd level and he ends up falling into free agency i think we can expect to see a similar career path as Tim Tebow’s. But look on the bright side at least ESPN has something to talk about….