A year ago today, Johnny Manziel led the Browns to their last victory
It’s been exactly one year since the Cleveland Browns were a half-decent team. On December 13, 2015, the Browns won their last football game. Since then, they’ve played 16 regular-season games, losing all of them. They’ve played four preseason games and lost all of those, too.
The Browns have been the definition of futile for the past 366 days (leap year!), but let’s take a moment to remember their last win. It came against the San Francisco 49ers – a fairly commanding 24-10 victory. The quarterback: Johnny Manziel.
That’s right, Manziel is the last quarterback to win a game for the Browns, and it’s somewhat hard to believe that he was even in the NFL a year ago. In the game, Manziel completed 21 of 31 passes for 270 yards with one touchdown and an interception. He was hardly the star of the game, though.
The Browns rushed for a whopping 230 yards and two touchdowns – 145 from Isaiah Crowell and 78 from Duke Johnson. The lowly 49ers couldn’t stop the run back then, just as they can’t a year later.
The game was fairly close until the second half at which point the Browns pulled away from Blaine Gabbert’s squad. They scored 14 unanswered to push their lead to 24-3 before a garbage-time touchdown from Gabbert pulled San Francisco to within 14. By then, the game was already over.
Then-head coach Mike Pettine was happy to get the victory, particularly because he was already squarely on the hot seat. He praised Manziel’s play, crediting him for doing a lot of good things.
"Offensively and defensively as complete a game as we've played. It was great to see us run the football as well as we did. I thought Johnny did some good things. He threw the ball away over the middle late," Pettine said at the time. Hopefully that's a lesson learned. But he stayed in the pocket until it was dictated that he had to get out. … I thought that was a solid effort by him and is a credit to his preparation.”
Manziel, after the game, said he felt as though he was just getting started.
"I've only gotten to play six or seven games," Manziel said. "The number is starting to climb but for me, these mean a lot to me. I still have a lot to prove. I feel like I'm just getting started."
Manziel would go on to play just two more games for the Browns before Austin Davis took over for the season finale against the Steelers. Since then, the Browns have used five different quarterbacks, from Cody Kessler to Robert Griffin III to Charlie Whitehurst.
They’ve had two 300-yard passing games since their last win but have yet to come close to reaching their rushing total from that game with 180 being their next-closest.
And of course, let’s not forget this was the game that Manziel whacked himself in the head with a Surface Tablet, which was mildly comical if nothing else.
"I probably overreacted a little bit," Manziel said.
