There is a new football league launching on Saturday, one with a familiar face for Cleveland Browns fans. The Fan Controlled Football, or FCF, kicks off this weekend with Browns draft flop Johnny Manziel as the face of the new league.
The FCF is an upstart with an unusual gimmick. Fans will call the plays and dictate the personnel running them in a 7-on-7 competition on a shortened field.
A huge departure from the NFL, this four-team spring league is 7-on-7 football, on a 50-yard field, with games limited to one hour. Fans will pick the lineups and call the plays as the games will be shown on Twitch, a video streaming service.
Browns fans who suffered through Manziel’s travails as the team’s unprepared, volatile quarterback from 2014-2015 might want to dial up some bootleg runs into the face of an unblocked defender. His time in Cleveland is one of the darkest moments of a prolonged night for the franchise, with his off-field misadventures and on-field struggles.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Manziel sounds more like someone who needs the money and something to do than a guy set on trying yet another comeback into the NFL, something he’s never accomplished since being exiled from Cleveland in shame in 2015.
“This isn’t me trying to be a comeback, redemption-type of tour for me to go back and play football anymore moving forward,” Manziel said. “After I play here, I probably won’t pick up a football again for another year. Two. Or maybe even longer than that. This is just an opportunity that got presented to me to get around a bunch of good guys who I feel like we’ll make great business connections with and I’ll have a lot of fun while I’m doing it.”
Manziel will be the quarterback for the Zappers, and one of his targets will be former Browns training camp phenom, Damon Sheehy-Guiseppe. Team owners in the new league include Quavo from Migos, 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman and former NFL RB Marshawn Lynch.
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