A year ago, as Johnny Manziel began his transition from college football improv star to NFL quarterback, former Browns general manager Phil Savage had one overarching thought about his potential success:

Whatever team drafted the Texas A&M product needed to make a massive schematic commitment to him. In other words, you could take Manziel out of college, but you couldn’t take his college offense out of Manziel’s game.

Savage, the executive director of the Senior Bowl, didn’t sound surprised by the quarterback’s difficult first season with the Browns.

“I don’t know all the intimate details of how it went down, but to me Manziel needed to go a place where they would shape the offense around him and build elements into it that he could perform,” Savage said. “If you were going to pour him into a more traditional style of offense then it was going to be a waste of his ability because his ability is to play backyard football.

via Tom Reed of cleveland.com