HOOVER, Ala. — If you’re a Texas A&M fan, you might not like what I’m about to say.
But it’s time to move on from Johnny Manziel.
Sure, it’s only been a little over seven months since we last saw the 2012 Heisman winner in an Aggies uniform, in which he rallied his team back from a 21 point deficit to defeat Duke in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. He was just drafted by the Cleveland Browns in May.
But if you’re an Aggies fan — or just a college football fan in general — stop asking the question “How do you replace Johnny Football?”
Manziel is the type of player that is irreplaceable. The unbelievable plays, last-minute comebacks and unforgettable moments when you said “How did that happen?” are things that come along once in a lifetime in college football.
The next step for the A&M program isn’t to replace Manziel, but rather take what Johnny Football did and bring your program to heights that Manziel couldn’t.
The Aggies, entering their third year in the conference, have yet to win a Southeastern Conference Title. Even after beating Alabama in 2012, they finished second in the SEC West thanks to a loss to LSU in October. For head coach Kevin Sumlin, what Manziel did — as astounding as it was — isn’t close to the ceiling for TAMU.
“Moving to the SEC is one thing,” he said. “But if we had got our brains beat out like everybody thought, I don't think recruiting would be going as well anyway if we're in the SEC. You've got to come in this league and compete. With that being said, like I said before, we haven't accomplished what we wanted to accomplish.”
For the Aggies to compete for an SEC West Title, they have to navigate a pretty tricky schedule in 2014. Instead of opening with a typical cupcake opponent Week 1, they’ll travel to Columbia, S.C. to take on South Carolina for the first college football game of the 2014 season.
“When it gets 100‑some degrees in Texas, it's about practice 17, guys don't want to do anything,” Sumlin said. “It's a little bit easier to get guys' attention when they know they're going on the road to play South Carolina on the SEC Network for the world to watch. I think it helps our sense of urgency to prepare. I kind of like playing games like that early in the season.”
Weeks 5 through 8 will feature a divisional game vs Arkansas in Arlington, Texas, a road trip to Mississippi State followed by a home game against Ole Miss capped off with a road trip to SEC West favorite Alabama. They don’t even get their first bye week until week nine.
They finish the last three weeks of the year with a roadtrip to Auburn, and home games versus Missouri and LSU.
The difficult schedule will make following in Manziel’s footsteps even more difficult for A&M’s new quarterback — Sumlin confirmed on Tuesday that he has yet to name a starter.
The two candidates that are the frontrunners to battle for the job in fall camp are sophomore Kenny Hill and true freshman Kyle Allen. Hill’s the quarterback with the most experience, having completed 16 passes for 183 yards and a touchdown during back-up duties behind Manziel.
Allen stepped on campus at College Station as the No. 1 overall quarterback prospect in the entire 2014 class. Having gone through spring will give him a much better handle on the offense heading into fall camp. But handing the reins to a wide-eyed true freshman in a hostile Williams Brice Stadium might be a decision that could come back to haunt him.
“We'll be at South Carolina, a night game, on the road,” Sumlin said. “Probably whoever the quarterback is, I'll be his only friend at that point.”
On the defensive side of things, the Aggies return seven starters from a unit that finished 111th in total defense, giving up an average of 475.8 yards per game. The defense struggled all season to keep opposing offenses off the field, which cost the Aggies a few games last year. If A&M wants to compete in the SEC West, its defense has to make some drastic improvements.
“Defensively I think we will have, believe it or not, more depth in our front seven, particularly in our front four,” Sumlin said. “We ended the year rotating five D‑line men out of the four spots. That took its toll. As anybody will tell you in this league, it's a line of scrimmage league. We've recruited and have more depth. Those guys are one year older.”
For Texas A&M, moving on from Johnny Manziel doesn’t mean finding a “Manziel 2.0” at quarterback. It doesn’t mean dwelling on the fact that he left early for the NFL, or thinking games would’ve gone differently in 2014 had he still been in college.
Remember what Manziel did for the program on a national and SEC stage. He put A&M, almost singlehandedly, on the map within the SEC, even when people were counting out the Aggies before their inaugural year in the conference even began. He made A&M a legit contender, and helped the Aggies be the only team in the country to beat the eventual National Champion Alabama in 2012.
Take what Manziel did and run with it. Don’t let Johnny Football be the only legacy left by A&M in the SEC. Do better than that. Build something great off of what he did.
Most importantly—do everything that Johnny couldn’t do.
Follow Morgan Moriarty on Twitter @Morgan_Moriarty
Johnny Manziel scrambles during the third quarter of Texas A&M’s 52-31 victory against Rice on Aug. 31, 2013 in College Station, Texas.
