All eyes turn to Cleveland Sunday, all eyes fixate on the social media phenom and electric lightning rod known as Johnny Football.
The hype that follows Johnny Manziel into the huddle at FirstEnergy Stadium, where he will be making his long-awaited maiden start at quarterback against the Bengals, is like no other we have ever witnessed.
Broadway Joe Namath? Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry? Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter? Magic and Bird? Michael and Kobe? LeBron? Peyton Manning? Andrew Luck? Matt Harvey? We knew they would be phenoms.
Johnny Football?
Who the hell knows?
Can he be the savior for a franchise that has never been to a Super Bowl?
Or will he be more freak show than anything else, not necessarily because his arms are too short to box with God, but because his improvisational genius may very well put him in harm's way if and when his raging competitive instincts border on recklessness and render him diminished like RG3?
Forrest Gump plays quarterback: "My momma always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
Will we get the 5-foot-11 fireball who will play bigger than Marvin Lewis thinks he can, and raise the game of his teammates on both sides of the ball and get the Dawg Pound barking from here to his Kerrville, Texas hometown and keep the Browns' playoff hopes alive?
Or will Johnny Football be a figment of our imagination? A celebrity quarterback who will forever play as hard off the field using his youth as cover as on the field?
There is a certain magnetism about him, his size or lack thereof, his boyish face, the joie de vivre and passion with which he plays reminding you of the young Brett Favre.
"He'd get his teammates to play above themselves," Mark Smith, Johnny Football's high school coach at Tivy High, told Serby Says. "He demanded as much from himself as he did his teammates.
Anytime that things weren't going as good as we thought they should be, he was the one saying, 'Look, I gotta get better. We all gotta get better.' He would include himself in that. He never put himself above the team. Those things I remember more as much as I do the way he played the game. That to me is more special than anything."
Smith recalled the exploits of Johnny Freshman against Alamo Heights when he accumulated nearly 500 yards of offense. "That's when you go, 'Holy cow, this kid's got something!'" Smith said and laughed.
Smith, now the coach at Madison High in San Antonio, began talking about Johnny Football's first start at quarterback against Champion High out of Burney. "We had a play that we called, a little quarterback run that he went about 80-something yards on, it was called back for holding. And he turns right around and he goes about 95 (laugh) on the next play doing the same thing, so that one has always stuck in my mind.
"Probably the time that really he didn't let himself score, and he helped drag a teammate (reserve wide receiver Robert Martinez) across that wasn't a fulltime player, just a guy that was part of the team. . .really the team all decided, I think he helped orchestrate it all, but they drug a young man across the goal line so he could experience what it was to get a touchdown.
"It was a Homecoming game, and I thought Johnny was gonna score, and he kinda slips and stumbles, which now that I know what happened, I get it. But he comes running to the sideline, he goes, 'Coach, you need to put Robert Martinez in at running back.' I'm like, 'Well he's not a running back.' He goes, 'Coach, just put him in, we're gonna get him in the end zone. Trust me, we will get him in there.' Johnny is actually the one that drug him across and got him in the end zone, the rest of them blocked their tails off to get him in."
Why was it so important to them? "He might have weighed 100 pounds soaking wet, he was there every day, worked hard every day, and they just wanted to do something for him 'cause of how hard he worked," Smith said. "Guys like Johnny understood that they needed to put themselves in a position where it was all about the team and family, and they wanted to make a family member feel good."
Lee Hood, as the school's longtime Learning Specialist for the Center for Student Athlete Services, helped navigate Johnny Football through the minefield of celebrity at Texas A & M.
"I am so excited for him," she told Serby Says. "I feel like most people don't really know him. You know he had a lot of publicity that hit him really fast, at a young age. And, he had to just kind of learn to deal with a lot of outside pressures that a lot of our students don't have to deal with. And I think as a result of that, people formed a perception of him that wasn't really accurate. And I think the people that know him know how truly grateful he is for this opportunity, how excited he is for this opportunity."
Hood — they call her Mama Lee — stayed late with Manziel in her learning lab every year to do his schoolwork.
"We had a lot of heart-to-hearts," she said, "but he never allows the outside world [to see] what stresses him."
Johnny Football's sanctuaries became the football field and Mama Lee's learning lab. She planned on calling him. And knew what she wanted to say to him.
"I want him to have fun," she said. "I want him to remember why he's there. This is what he LOVES to do, and I want him to enjoy it. I don't want him to think about the pressure, I don't want him to think about what people say or don't say. I want him to just go out there and know that he's living his dream."
Hood doesn't like some of the off-the-field publicity that has tackled Johnny Football. "I don't like the fact that if he was anyone else, if he was any other 19-year-old, 20-year-old kid, no one would be saying a thing about it," she said.
But he isn't any other 22-year-old kid.
"I don't think he does enjoy himself," Smith said. "I do know this — when it's football season, it's football season, and he's all in. He's not gonna go out and do things that's gonna be a detriment to the football team and those things. He's 24-7 committed to being a Cleveland Brown and being the best that he can be and helping that team be successful. He was that way all the way through in high school, and I think he was that way at A&M. I think he's been mischaracterized in a lot of ways. I do just think he's a young man that enjoys life."
Smith said he believes his teammates will rally around him.
"I think Jimmy Johnson said it best on that FOX show one day," Smith said. "'He's got it. What it is, I don't know how you explain it, I don't know how you categorize it, I don't even how you tell people what it is — but he's got it.
"He's got something about him that attracts other people in his confidence, in the way he speaks, and the way he carries himself. If everybody would truly just stop to listen, he talks about his teammates and the team as much as he wants to talk about himself."
Hood always attended Johnny Football's games, and loved every second of them. "That's the one thing that we've talked about, with him not getting to play yet (behind Brian Hoyer), is I did miss watching him play, because he's fun to watch!" Hood said. "You don't know what you're gonna get. You don't know what's going to happen. He makes things happen."
Smith texted Manziel Wednesday. "I wished him the best and just gave him a few reminders of just doing the very best he can. He can't worry about the things he can't control, just worry about what he can."
Johnny Football texted Smith back Wednesday night:
"Thanks Coach."
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