If the Eagles could go back, would you want them to take Johnny Manziel?

Don’t pretend the thought hasn’t entered your mind. (Poll at the bottom)

He was sitting on the board at number 22. Chip Kelly had a chance to make up for missing out on Johnny Manziel in college, by drafting him to be his franchise quarterback in the NFL. I knew he wasn’t going to, but I was still relieved at the time that I heard that the Eagles had moved out of the spot and avoided bringing the Manziel circus to a town that already had a quarterback.

Let’s make one thing clear: this isn’t me campaigning for the Eagles to trade for Johnny Manziel at the end of this season. I still think the Browns will ultimately let Brian Hoyer walk in free-agency and move forward with Manziel as the face of their franchise at the end of this season. Whether or not that’s the right move remains to be seen, but there is too much money to be made with Manziel to not give him a shot as the starter in Cleveland (#TheLand).

If by some chance the Browns elect to sign Hoyer to a long-term deal and move Manziel at the end of this season, maybe the Eagles would be interested. I don’t know whether Mark Sanchez can keep the Eagles afloat enough for Nick Foles to come back late this year and lead the Eagles to the playoffs and maybe a playoff run, but Mark Eckel of NJ.com reported yesterday that the Eagles were not enamored with Foles prior to his injury.

"Foles’ play during the first half of this 2014 season in stark contrast to his Pro Bowl season of 2013 has “soured” some in the organization, including general manager Howie Roseman, according to sources…“I think Howie is looking at quarterbacks,” a league source told NJ.com. “He’s kind of soured on Foles, and I don’t think he’s alone. The organization isn’t sold that he’s the guy going forward.”Keep in mind the people who wanted Foles in that 2012 draft are no longer with the team, one is the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs and the other is the offensive coordinator for the New York Jets…"

“The people in the organization who wanted Foles” were Andy Reid and Marty Morhinweg. Eckel had previously reported that the organization was higher on Kirk Cousins than Nick Foles, but the two who were in charge of the offense at that time, pushed for Foles over Cousins. For once, an Andy Reid draft decision turned out to be the correct one. But just because Foles has proven that he is better than someone who is now the third-string quarterback on a team three games below .500, doesn’t mean he is the franchise quarterback.

And if Foles isn’t the franchise quarterback, and you are operating under the assumption that Mark Sanchez isn’t going to lead you to a Superbowl, then the Eagles need to find the person who is their franchise quarterback.

For the time being, Manziel is on the Browns’ roster. I didn’t want the Eagles to take Manziel at 22 because I was higher on Foles at that time than I am now (apparently so was the organization) and I wanted them to add a receiver or draft a player like Bradley Roby or Darqueze Dennard. Instead they traded out of the 22nd pick, where the Browns would ultimately take Manziel, and the Eagles would shock the world with their choice of Louisville’s Marcus Smith.

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Through nine weeks of the season (eight for both teams), neither of the two are exactly rookie of the year candidates. Smith, perhaps predictably, had been essentially red-shirted to this point of the season, dressing for just four games and not having record a tackle, while looking rather out-of-place in his limited snaps. It’s not that anyone entered the season expecting Smith to immediately be a dominant force, but he looks like a mid-rid project type of player. I would have been fine if the Eagles took that type or risk in the second round or in a year where they didn’t have other needs to fill, but that wasn’t the case. No one knows if Marcus Smith is going to turn out to be a bust or not, but it’s clear that he wasn’t a first-round type of player. The Eagles probably could have gotten him in the second-round, and if he was taken before they could get to him, too bad. (It’s possible with DeMeco Ryans out that the Eagles decide that Casey Matthews and Emmanuel Acho aren’t their best bets to replace Ryans for  at least half a season, and they use Smith more and he performs. Not likely, but not impossible.)

Manziel, on the other hand, “lost” a preseason quarterback battle with Brian Hoyer. Hoyer has played well, not great, after struggling in the preseason. Manziel also struggled in the preseason, perhaps prompting the Browns to go with veteran, but there technically isn’t any reason that he couldn’t have turned a slow preseason around and had regular season success like Hoyer has.

That said, I wavered back and forth in the draft lead-up about what type of player that I thought Manziel would be in the NFL. I came to the conclusion that while I thought Manziel COULD be successful in the right offense, he’s one of those type of players I would gladly watch succeed or fail, just not on my team. Nothing that he demonstrated in the preseason, made me wish that the Eagles had drafted “Johnny Football”.

Manziel had his overblown off-the-field drama, I can’t even call it trouble, during training camp and into the early preseason, which probably wasn’t something that Chip Kelly would have liked in his locker room. Remember, just because Chip Kelly recruited Johnny Manziel out of high school, doesn’t mean he loved “Johnny Football”. Manziel wasn’t a celebrity yet when Kelly originally recruited him, but perhaps his alter-ego and questionable work-ethic scared Chip and Howie Roseman off this time. Perhaps.

Manziel’s play in the preseason didn’t scare me because it was unimpressive, it scared me because it didn’t seem like he had made a great attempt to grasp Kyle Shannahan’s offense. Manziel looked like he rarely went through more than one or two reads, before just tucking it and trying to be Texas A&M Manziel. It certainly is possible in the time that he’s spent not playing, he’s soaked in the offense much more completely, and just needed some extra time to do so. He is a rookie in the NFL, that certainly isn’t out of the question. But until he proves that to be the case, the idea that he doesn’t have an NFL off-the-field work ethic,which a leaked Patriots’ scouting report suggested, scares me.

But the talent is undeniable. He has a quick release, a strong arm, and can extend the play. He needed to improve on his in-pocket ability to complete passes, especially intermediate ones, but I don’t doubt that he could have done that. And think about this: after nearly a year of Nick Foles’ immobility, we are salivating at the idea of semi-mobile Mark Sanchez running this offense. Imagine someone who is as athletic as Manziel in this offense. At the very least, it sounds good.

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So you have to weigh the good with the bad when evaluating whether or not you wish the Eagles took Manziel. It’s a loaded question, for sure. In all fairness, giving the question an accurate answer right now is nearly impossible given that we don’t know what the future of Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez, Marcus Smith and Manziel holds.

If I had to give the question an answer, I’d still say thanks, but no thanks to Manziel. He has all the talent, and I do think he relishes playing the sport when he’s playing it. But I don’t think, at least yet, that he has fully grasped that playing in the NFL requires more than just having elite athletic talent on the field and putting in some work off the field. I don’t think he’s embraced trying to become a complete player and putting in the off the field work that it takes to do that. He’s the prototypical, high school, college, big-man on campus. You want to do anything to win for him on the field and he is a fierce competitor, but off the field you probably don’t want to follow him step for step, or train with him in the offseason. And I’m not sure that he will ever change.

Let the record show, I hope Manziel succeeds in the NFL. If he somehow does end up on the Eagles (extremely unlikely), I’m sure there would be an angle I could take to think that he could be the one to help lead us to the Superbowl title that this city is starved for. But then again, I felt that way with Nick Foles coming into this season.

What I do know is that for the next six to eight weeks, Mark Sanchez gets to throw his hat in the ring. Frankly, if Chip Kelly gets hot as a playcaller (something he hasn’t done in consecutive games this year) and the running back trio of LeSean McCoy, Darren Sproles and Chris Polk gets a heavy load down the stretch, it won’t take much for Sanchez to look like he COULD be part of an elite NFC team that COULD conceivably make a run at a Superbowl. But if we are ready to admit Foles isn’t the type of quarterback that is going to year-to-year put the Eagles in situation to be a Superbowl contender, then it’s time to find the quarterback that is going to do that. And if given the choice, I’d rather have Johnny Manziel handed that opportunity than Mark Sanchez. I understand it isn’t that cut and dry, but had the Eagles taken Manziel at 22, it could have been.

Gun to my head though, I’m not sure any of the three—Foles, Sanchez, or Manziel—will or would have ever put the Eagles in that situation. I just don’t know how the Eagles will ever be in a position to take a quarterback better than Foles for sure, and maybe even Manziel or Sanchez.

Do you wish the Eagles had selected Johnny Manziel?