Free The QB: The Making of Modern Quarterbacks by Bruce Feldman

playing for the Aggies’ baseball team.
    George Whitfield had never heard of Johnny Manziel in the spring of 2011 when the Texan’s mother called up the Southern California–based quarterback coach. As connected as Whitfield had become inthe football world, he’d never been one to keep tabs on the recruiting sites.
    “Honestly, if there’s some high school kid breaking records an hour north of here, I probably wouldn’t know it,” Whitfield admitted.
    Manziel’s mother had heard about the work the self-described “Quarterback Builder” had done with Ben Roethlisberger and Cam Newton. Most observers saw Manziel, ranked as the thirty-ninth-best QB prospect in the country in his recruiting class by ESPN, as a long shot to win the A&M starting job.
    Whitfield surfed around the Internet and found some high school footage of Manziel. The Aggie came out a week after A&M completed spring football. The week of training cost the Manziels $1,500, plus airfare and hotel.
    In San Diego, Whitfield was already set to work with a high-profile quarterback prospect, Virginia Tech’s Logan Thomas, a 6′6″, 250-pound sophomore some NFL draft analysts had already touted as a future number one overall pick. Whitfield structured his week so that Manziel and Thomas would work out separately. Manziel, though, knew of Thomas’s rep from having seen the Hokies play Michigan in the Sugar Bowl and convinced Whitfield to let him train side by side with the QB who was a half foot taller. Whitfield compared the dynamic to seeing a Kodiak bear being sized up by a leopard. Whitfield kept harping at Manziel about many of the same things he preached to Cam Newton about working in his cockpit rather than being too quick to rip the cord and escape. Whitfield shortened Manziel’s throwing motion, relying on a shorter stride and keeping the ball closer to his ear.
    Manziel left California more confident in his passing skills, but that hardly made him the front-runner to emerge as the Aggies’ new starter. A July arrest for drunken street fighting and the fake ID he produced, which triggered a shirtless mug shot being tweeted all over the Internet, nearly cost Manziel his career at A&M. Kingsbury found out while lying on a beach in Cabo with a girlfriend, when he noticed a half dozen missed calls from his mercurial young QB. Sumlin lobbied for him with school brass and got him another chance.Despite Manziel’s struggles in the spring, Sumlin and Kingsbury still were convinced he was their best option as they made their debut in the roughest league in college football—the SEC West.
    Manziel’s father, Paul, told Kingsbury his son would win the Heisman. Kingsbury wanted to roll his eyes. Most parents predicted greatness for their kids, but this sounded different. Cocksure. Like, “No, you don’t get
it.
” Like when Chief Brody muttered in
Jaws
, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” It was an interesting family, for sure. Paul Manziel was a scratch golfer, had a black belt in martial arts, and sold cars for a living. Johnny’s grandfather would later proclaim himself to the
New York Times
the 1983 world champ of cockfighting.
    Turns out, Paul Manziel was prescient when it came to his boy’s football future. The younger Manziel’s daring, gunslinger style evoked memories of his favorite QB, Brett Favre. Manziel’s first start put a scare into the number twenty-four Florida Gators. At one point, thanks primarily to Manziel, the Aggies had almost as many first downs (15) as UF had run plays (18). Texas A&M didn’t beat the Gators, falling 20–17, but by the end of the day everybody around college football was buzzing about the frenetic QB who had made a dormant, stuffy old program must-see TV. Heck, even Sumlin and Kingsbury’s chins were on the floor. After all, in practice, plays get whistled dead when tacklers touch the quarterback. Who knew actually tackling Manziel would be such a headache or what magical things he could do after