Former Kansas City Chiefs front office executive Will Lewis recently spoke to reporters about how the staff was enamored with Johnny Manziel.
Imagine for a minute a scenario where Johnny Manziel was the young drafted quarterback that Andy Reid was tasked to work with.
In a world where Patrick Mahomes is the face of the franchise, such an idea sounds absolutely ridiculous (and completely unwanted), but according to former Kansas City Chiefs front office exec Will Lewis, the powers-that-be were all enamored with Manziel until the Cleveland Browns swept in and removed any potential for such a scenario.
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Lewis, the former director of pro scouting for the Chiefs early in John Dorsey‘s tenure as general manager, recently spoke to Herbie Teope of NFL.com and told him the Chiefs had serious interest in Manziel.
"“Truly, if it had all been just about the player, then they may not have Patrick Mahomes there today because everybody was very much impressed with Johnny as a player,” Lewis said. “He competes, his mobility, his ability to throw the ball, his accuracy, all those things. They just went down the line and checked off the boxes.”"
The Chiefs were selecting at No. 23, where they eventually chose Dee Ford, but the Cleveland Browns traded up to No. 22 to grab Manziel off the board.
Lewis never says that Manziel was the player the Chiefs were poised to pick until the Browns came in, but the quote above points to that being a definite possibility. It also wasn’t just a John Dorsey thing. Instead, he dropped the names of Andy Reid, Matt Nagy, Brad Childress, and Doug Pederson, insinuating that everyone had checked out Manziel and approved of him in some form or another.
It’s always a lot of fun to hear how draft boards looked in the past, and it’s interesting to hear war room tales of picks that were almost submitted or trades that almost went down. But this one is a bit of a nightmare.
It’s possible that Andy Reid could have pulled the best out of Manziel and the entire narrative surrounding the Texas A&M product would be quite different. However, Chiefs fans should be quite glad things worked out the way they did, from Alex Smith all the way to Patrick Mahomes.