Johnny Manziel suicide attempt admission is a reminder these players are human too

Johnny Manziel wasn't the player he was expected to be but sometimes fans forget that these athletes are human too

Cleveland Browns v Kansas City Chiefs
Cleveland Browns v Kansas City Chiefs / Peter G. Aiken/GettyImages
facebooktwitterreddit

A new documentary on Netflix will be released which covers the life of Johnny Manziel, off the field.

According to sources, in "Untold: Johnny Football," Manziel will peel back some layers to tell everyone just how dark things got for him in 2016. He had appeared in just eight games for the Cleveland Browns and struggled to live up to the hype that surrounded him at Texas A&M.

He was then released ahead of the 2016 season, following an incident where he was faced with a misdemeanor after being accused of hitting and threatening his girlfriend. Not long after this, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but didn't want to get help. Instead, he decided to hit rock bottom, then take his own life.

"I had planned to do everything I wanted to do at that point in my life, spend as much money as I possibly could and then my plan was to take my life," Manziel says in the documentary according to Jake Trotter of ESPN. "I wanted to get as bad as humanly possible to where it made sense, and it made it seem like an excuse and an out for me."

Manziel reportedly says he bought a gun before going on a bender and even pulled the trigger in an attempt to take his own life. Thankfully, the gun malfunctioned.

"Still to this day, don't know what happened. But the gun just clicked on me."

Manziel has since returned home to Texas where he mended things with his family and is on the right track again by all accounts.

Players, just like Johnny Manziel, are human too

Sadly, it's easy to forget players are human too. We see them on the field completing superhuman feats and think they could never have the same problems we do.

Thankfully, Manziel — as well as other athletes such as Tristan Wirfs, Hayden Hurst, and Dak Prescott — have all opened up as well. The fact that they're saying what's happening in their lives is a huge first step.

For fans, we need to remember this as well. It's one thing to criticize play — and for writers that can be our job. But it's not okay to personally attack players — which happened often when Manziel was in Cleveland. And it wasn't just Browns fans either, but just NFL fans that wanted to see him fail after the success he had at Texas A&M.

Here's to Manziel getting healthier and having the courage to speak up.

More Cleveland Browns news and analysis

feed