Johnny Manziel is going down a path of destruction

Johnny Manziel must change his ways before he ends up ruining his career and his life.

Scar /skär/ noun: a mark left on the skin or within body tissue where a wound, burn, or sore has not healed completely and fibrous connective tissue has developed.

Scars are often the reminder of a challenging time in one’s life. They are everlasting and can either fuel or hinder a person as they move forward from the experience that scarred them.

Johnny Manziel is scarred, the Cleveland Browns organization is scarred, the fan base is scarred and the question is can these scars help evolve the marriage between the three or are the scars so prominent it is best for the team, fans and the beleaguered quarterback to move on and learn from these scars.

Manziel isn’t the first quarterback to enter the league by storm boasting the celebrity off the field that he does.

“The marks humans leave are too often scars.” – John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars”

Pro sports have seen an array of athletes who enjoyed to party in their downtime: Joe Namath, Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle to name a few of the successful ones.

But then you have the others. The ones who fell by the wayside. The ones who wasted talent.

We’ve seen many athletes come into the pro spotlight off the heels of a stellar college career only to fizzle out and fade away as the allure of partying and drugs overpowers their desire to be successful on the field.

The celebrity off the field wins and overtakes the person leaving them to lead a life of a persona instead of a human being.

To date, this has been the case with Johnny Manziel. A privileged youth from Texas who took the SEC by storm as the star at Texas A&M, winning the Heisman trophy and electrifying the fan base in College Station leading them to nickname the stadium “The house that Johnny built.”

“The saddest thing in life is wasted talent and the choices you make will shape your life forever.” –Chazz Palminteri, “A Bronx Tale”

Manziel was electric on the field. But off the field he was a mess.

Manziel time and time again was seen partying it up during his time at A&M. He seemed to soak it up. The Money Manziel, Johnny Football persona took on a life of its own.

Soon Manziel was seen in the presence of such names as Drake, LeBron James, Justin Bieber and even Floyd Mayweather, Jr. Manziel went from quarterback to pop-culture sensation overnight as his celebrity continued to grow off the field.

For a man trying to become a star quarterback on the field, the celebrity he was gaining was for all the wrong reasons.

Manziel’s antics continued in the pros during his first two years in the league as he has been suspended by the team, did a stint in rehab and has been spotted in Vegas the night before the 2015 season finale while being in concussion protocol wearing a wig and fake mustache allegedly.

Needless to say Manziel continues to garner attention for all the wrong reasons casting a negative light on not only himself, but also the organization who employs him.

While taking this all in, and breaking down the trials and tribulations of Manziel I couldn’t help but find comparison between he and former Raiders quarterback Todd Marinovich. He, was a gifted but troubled athlete who also hailed from a prominent family.

Marinovich the product of former NFL coach Marv Marinovich was a star quarterback at USC and former first-round draft pick of the Raiders. He was deemed “the bionic quarterback, a test-tube athlete and the boy in the bubble,” in California magazine January 1988 in an article headlined: “ROBO QB: THE MAKING OF A PERFECT ATHLETE.”

But Marinovich was leading a double life as he enjoyed the nightlife of partying, drinking and dabbling in different street drugs.

Marinovich admitted to once takin LSD after every game because it was undetectable on NFL toxicology tests.

What started off as just marijuana and alcohol for Marinovich quickly led him down a path of LSD, ecstasy, cocaine and eventually heroin addiction throwing away a once promising NFL career.

Now granted, from what we know Manziel’s problems don’t run as far deep… Yet.

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But what is it going to take for the former Heisman winning quarterback to wake up and realize the scars and the path of destruction he ultimately dwindling down?

Numerous people have reached out to Manziel to try to help save him from himself with no luck.

Even former Browns quarterback tried to contact him and was shunned and ignored by the troubled quarterback.

So now what? Where do we go from here?

The Browns ushered in a new era Tuesday in naming former Bengals offensive coordinator Hue Jackson the 16^th full-time head coach in franchise history. Jackson brings a track record of being a quarterback whisperer to the franchise and the natural thought is he may be the voice needed to get through to Manziel and save the quarterbacks fading professional career.

But, have the bridges been burned within the organization and are the scars too prominent at this point to save this troubled marriage between Manziel and the franchise who has stuck by him and supported him as he continued to drag them through the mud?

In the end a wound may heal, but scars are forever. It’s now up to the Browns to decide if the scars are just too obtrusive to move past.

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