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Mike Pettine on Johnny Manziel: We’re supporting him

By Thomas Moore

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Oct 18, 2015; Cleveland, OH, USA; Cleveland Browns head coach Mike Pettine during the first half against the Denver Broncos at FirstEnergy Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports

Cleveland Browns head coach Mike Pettine met with the media on Monday and had to deal with questions relating to last week’s domestic incident between backup quarterback Johnny Manziel and his girlfriend, Colleen Elizabeth Crowley.

From the sound of it, the media was not very happy that Pettine did not reveal every intimate detail about how the Browns are handling the sensitive matter.

Related: What should the Browns do with Johnny Manziel?

Thanks to Hayden Grove, who covers the Browns for Orange and Brown Report, who shared the following back and forth between a few members of the media, who were determined to get blood, and Pettine, who was just as determined to protect his players.

Q: One of your hallmarks of play like a Brown is on the stadium wall: accountability. How can you justify not disciplining Manziel publicly and still cling to those play like a Brown ideals? Don’t these lose credibility?

Pettine: I’m not of the mindset that all discipline has to be public.

Q: To be believed it has to be.

Pettine: To me, the trust has to be there with the team. To me, that’s my main priority.

Q: Is it reasonable to think (that since) he was not suspended, you didn’t think there was any physical abuse of his girlfriend?

Pettine: Until we had all the information from the police and when the league concludes their report, we’ll have a more total picture of what happened. But given the details that we had, I already said we made our decision based on the details we had in hand.

Q: Some of the details, she used the words beating her and her head was pushed against the glass and driving at a high rate of speed, to admitting he had been drinking. I don’t know what his aftercare is.

Pettine: You don’t know what his aftercare is.

Q: But he did spend 10 weeks in a treatment facility. Those are not pretty details. We’re not talking jaywalking.

Pettine: Is there a question in there?

Q: I guess trying to follow up Tony’s question, is there accountability?

Pettine: There’s accountability. Some accountability is public, some of it’s private. If you think that we’re just turning a cheek to this and ignoring it, you’d be dead wrong.

Pettine’s unwillingness to reveal the team’s inner workings left some media members grumpy …

and others feeling pleased with themselves …

while some struggled to accept a fair answer to a question.

Whether anyone in the room wanted to hear it or not, Pettine made it clear that the Browns are taking this seriously.

“There’s a lot of things going on. And you’re dealing with somebody’s personal life and confidentiality and some things that have come out that are disturbing,” Pettine said according to ESPN. “I get the outcry, and I know that everything with him is magnified times 1,000. He’s made a lot of strides. This is a process with him. It’s upsetting. It’s upsetting for all of us. I don’t know how much more I can say on it.

“I just don’t like where we’re headed with just because there was no instant public punishment, that all of a sudden there’s no accountability in the locker room.”

Pettine also said the NFL is looking into the matter, which in the wake of the mishandling of Ray Rice and Greg Hardy, is no surprise as the league needs to look into absolutely anything involving a player and their spouse and/or girlfriend.

“Certainly we’re not saying that he has it all figured out. It’s a process and we’re supporting him through it.” – Head coach Mike Pettine on Johnny Manziel

“The league gets involved when there [are] cases like this,” Pettine explained. “I don’t know what their timetable is; I don’t know the specifics. As with anything that comes up, there is a reporting process you go through, but I’m not privy to what their details are as far as timetable.”

According to multiple media reports, an NFL spokesman had no additional comment.

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The media members at Pettine’s press conferences are obviously within their rights to ask questions, just as Pettine is within his rights to answer them as he sees fit. The one thing about Pettine, though, is that he has never come across as someone who says one thing and does another, or goes out of his way to be prickly with the media.

So for a reporter to essentially call Pettine a liar because any discipline handed down to Manziel did not meet that reporter’s guidelines, well we can understand why Pettine was not in a sharing mood.

This being the Browns, there are plenty of people who are going to want to spin this into yet another negative. And since it involves Manziel, the story will be taken to another level.

But the only thing that really matters is that the Browns are standing behind Manziel and trying to get him the help he needs.

Next: The Browns are close to being a good team

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