Report: Johnny Manziel Teammate Wishes Browns Had Drafted Teddy Bridgewater

What if the Cleveland Browns had drafted Teddy Bridgewater instead of Johnny Manziel? A lot of Browns fans have been kicking this hypothetical around in conversation over the past few months. And it turns out some Browns players have been wondering the exact same thing.

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In a Monday morning Bleacher Report piece about Manziel and Bridgewater, Mike Freeman relates this telling anecdote:

"Some players believed Manziel wasn’t good enough to play in the NFL. It wasn’t solely the work ethic or the partying, but a dramatic talent deficit.In the wake of that disastrous start against the Bengals, a Browns player remembers a brief conversation he had with a teammate.“Think about where we’d be now,” the player recalled telling a teammate, “if we had drafted Teddy Bridgewater.”"

Not only did Bridgewater perform far better than Manziel on the field last year, he comported himself off the field in a much more admirable and professional way.

And to think this time last year we were seriously debating Manziel’s draft value vs. Bridgewater’s. In retrospect, it should have been a slam dunk.

It’s one thing for fans to question the wisdom of drafting one player over another, but quite another for a player’s teammates to be asking the same things.

By the sounds of it, Johnny Manziel has a long way to go before he wins the trust of his fellow Browns. Bridgewater meanwhile has not only won the trust of his teammates, he’s ascended to a leadership position.

One year into the process, Manziel is in rehab while Bridgewater is reportedly setting up informal workouts with his receivers. That pretty much says it all right there.

As if Bridgewater’s on-field performance hadn’t already said enough.

Report: Johnny Manziel Teammate Wishes Browns Had Drafted Teddy Bridgewater

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