An Open Letter to Johnny Manziel

Oh Johnny.  Dear Johnny Football.
I can’t believe that I’m about to say this, but I’m disappointed in you.  I had such hope that you would be the one to turn this team around, even if it took me a year and a half to think that you could be the one.  I’m sure that means nothing to you, but for someone who has grown up watching this team release quarterback after quarterback it means everything. 
First and foremost my disappointment comes from your lack of effort.  Not in the way you play the game because I believe you could have been a great NFL quarterback, but in your lack of effort to stay under the radar and the lack of effort you’ve put forth in clearing your name.
You are days older than I am (literally, you are two days older than me), so I hope you are not surprised that I did not want someone who celebrated their 21st birthday the same weekend that I did leading my team (that same weekend, the Cleveland Browns played the New England Patriots in Foxboro [on my birthday, Dec 8] and almost won but lost with a missed field goal, this little tidbit is something I don’t expect you to ever know because you were probably too drunk to remember).  When rumors started to fly that you would be our draft pick I was vehement about not wanting you.  People were flocking to me to tell me that they were so excited to get a Heisman winner and I just kept saying “He’ll be like all the others – they won’t give him a chance and he’ll be gone in two years.”
Well you’re two years are up.  And I even started to like you. You showed promise.  You were playing well – sure you had some interceptions – but not everyone can be Tom Brady or Peyton Manning when in a whole two seasons you play a whopping fourteen games that don’t even add up to an entire season.  You were given the opportunity to try and turn this city around, to give us a chance.  And what do you do?  BLOW IT. I fought tooth and nail to convince people that you were going to be fine.  When the rest of the fans turned their backs on you, I picked up my Johnny Football Fan Flag and waved it proudly. 
The team management barely gave you chance but you never gave the fans a chance.  You had a fan base of young college aged kids who wanted to see you on our field.  I might not have been one of those people but I wanted to be sitting in the stands next year with you facing off Tom Brady at the New England game because I started to believe in you.  But decided to go and do whatever you felt like doing despite what you were probably told by your agents.  I don’t care that you were partying over Thanksgiving or over your bye-week break.  What I care about is the fact that you allowed it to keep happening.  I get it, you’re 23 and you were forced into the adult world earlier than most people – but that’s what happens when you become some all-star football player.  I can defend the kid who wants to party because I want to do the same things.  The only difference between you and me is that you’re famous and I’m just the girl who works in a medical office.  I’m not saying you needed to stop partying, but you did need stop doing it in such a way that made you look the fool.  Maybe if you had made an effort to stand up for yourself or to try and keep your partying to a private level we wouldn’t be in the situation we are currently in.I like to party as much as the next sorority girl, but I know there’s a limit and when I’m being told by several sources that I have a problem I try to listen to those people.  Did you listen? Probably not considering you were hanging out with Father of Three Kardashian Children and Family Alcoholic, Scot Disick on multiple occasions. Like I said above, I understand being 23 and wanting to party whenever, if I had the money that you have, I’d be doing it too. But your life took some crazy turns and now you’re without a team and without an agent, so who is really doing better in life? 
It wasn’t easy to defend you when all I wanted to do was throw water in your face and ask if playing football even mattered to you.  It’s getting even harder now that you’ve been accused of and now indicted for domestic violence once again.  I can defend partying, but if it comes out that you’re guilty of this it won’t be the fans in the city that you’re playing for shaming you, it will be the entire NFL fanbase and I can’t defend you on that. 
It breaks my heart that the team I grew up watching has to once again find yet another quarterback to be “their guy” that I will probably say “It’s okay, his name won’t last long on the jersey anyway” and I’ll have to accept yet another player into my hometown.
I never thought that I would be disappointed in you.  I thought that maybe you could actually be the change that this city needed, but that meant that you had to change as a person and anyone who has a TFM article about their (satirical) 21st birthday timeline can’t be changed. 
It’s been a little more than a month since Cleveland released you and somehow you still seem to be one of our biggest headlines. You’ve lost two agents in the meantime and your little visit to Coachella isn’t helping your case to show you’re growing as a person.
While I’ve drifted a long way from this fan base into one that accepts allegations of cheating, the Cleveland Browns will still hold a special place in my heart and I’m sad that you cannot continue to hold that place anymore.
 But what do I know? I run a blog titled Jackie Doesn’t Know Crap…