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

pirouetting away from some three-hundred-pound monsters?
    “This is a different animal,” Kingsbury said, referencing Manziel. Kingsbury, a former record-setting quarterback at Texas Tech, played in Mike Leach’s “Air Raid” spread system. Like other Leach disciples, Kingsbury used a variation of the Air Raid, but there had never been such a running threat at QB in the scheme. With each week came new wrinkles to A&M’s souped-up Air Raid. By the time Manziel played his next SEC game, at the end of September, he threw, for a school record, 453 yards, and ran for 104 yards to break the SEC record for total offense in a 58–10 win over Arkansas. Two months later, Manziel had emerged as a Heisman contender. His team, which hadn’tfinished in the Top 10 in almost twenty years, went into Tuscaloosa ranked number fifteen to face the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide.
    Two hours before kickoff, Manziel, who as an A&M freshman (per Sumlin’s policy) had been off-limits to the media all season, tweeted to his 25,000 Twitter followers a line from the action movie
300
: “Give to them nothing, but take from them EVERYTHING.”
    As had been the norm for A&M, Manziel and company jumped on the Tide early. Manziel scooted his way around defenders and zipped passes to give the Aggies the early lead. A&M outgained Alabama, 172 yards to 34 yards in the opening quarter. The Aggies put up 20 points on Coach Nick Saban’s D before the opening quarter was over, and Johnny Football wasn’t just trending, he was becoming the sports world’s hottest new thing. All season no player had a run go for longer than 22 yards against the Tide. Manziel, though, gashed the Tide for runs of 29 and 32 yards. More impressive: Manziel started the game 21 of 22 as a passer.
    The play that made all the highlight shows and became the signature Johnny Football moment occurred in the first half, when A&M faced third-and-goal from the Alabama 10-yard line. The Tide collapsed the pocket with a four-man rush. Manziel tried to squeeze through what he thought was a crease in the right side of the line. But Alabama’s defensive end shoved Manziel’s right tackle, Jake Matthews, back into him. The QB caromed off Matthews, into A&M’s right guard, which caused the ball to pop free from Manziel’s hands for a heartbeat. Manziel re-gathered the ball while twisting his body back to his right, so he had his back to the other twenty-one players on the field. He hunched down and snagged the ball while wheeling to his left, escaped the scrum, and fired a pass with both shoulders parallel to the goal line to a wide-open Ryan Swope in the back of the end zone.
    “You can’t teach that, can you?” howled CBS analyst Gary Danielson, a former longtime NFL QB, on the telecast. “And you can’t defend that, either.”
    The play Manziel actually relished the most came later in the game, after Bama battled back, scoring 17 consecutive points to get within a field goal going into the fourth quarter. Manziel had driventhe Aggies to the Tide 24-yard line. A&M came out in a five-receiver set with an empty backfield. Alabama put eight defenders up at the line to crowd the Aggies. Manziel glanced left and noticed his inside receiver, Malcome Kennedy, had beaten the Tide’s top cover man, Dee Milliner (a guy who later became the ninth pick in the 2013 NFL Draft), off the line by getting the DB to think he was going inside. Even though Milliner and Kennedy seemed to be running in a cluster toward the left corner of the end zone, Manziel lofted a pass that came down just over the receiver’s left shoulder. A diving Milliner couldn’t reach it with his outstretched arm. Touchdown. Alabama’s best DB had tight coverage, and Johnny Manziel still beat him. “Still think I can’t throw from the pocket?” Manziel laughed to himself.
    “No moment is too big for him,” Sumlin said of Manziel after the game. “He gives our players a sense that anything can happen. It’s a