Untold: Johnny Football is a 2023 documentary tracking the rise and fall of Johnny Manziel from college phenom to professional flameout.
Ask any college football fan (and probably even general sports fan), from 2012-2014 a diminutive quarterback located in College Station, Texas was the guy to watch. Who is this guy? None other than Johnny Manziel, nicknamed plainly and spectacularly “Johnny Football.” Cocksure and charismatic, John Football would go on to surpass all college expectations by becoming the first freshman to win the Heisman and catapult a historically mid-tier program into a nationally known brand.
In the process, Manziel would become a brand unto himself, partying hard on campus and taking money on the side by jetting from locale to locale signing autographs—impermissible by the NCAA at the time. Despite the red flags, “Money” Manziel managed to be drafted by the QB-needy Cleveland Browns, which would accelerate his downfall and eventual flameout from the National Football League.
There’s a good and bad element to the Untold series found on Netflix. The good? They’ve covered sports stories/figures that ESPN’s famed 30 for 30 generally haven’t yet. The bad? More times than not, some sizable sentiment of viewers (throw myself in there) can’t help and wonder how better 30 for 30 would have covered the subject. Untold: Johnny Football has interesting reveals, but a ton of X’s and O’s left unaddressed and skimmed over.
Ryan Duffy directs this specific installment, and it’s evident early on that we’re going to get a lot of Manziel a lot of the time. Camera shy, Money Manziel is not. It is cool in a time capsule kind of way to see tape of Johnny in high school and then remember how electric he was in college—abrasive personality or not. And that is where the documentary is best, with Johnny giving his honest assessment of how crazy life was in college and the closest people around him doing the same. The vibe doesn’t last forever, but in spots during the doc it isn’t too hard to lightly empathize with the tumultuous whirlwind (albeit much of it self-inflicted) Manziel found himself in. A highlight of the movie is the war Manziel and co. had with the NCAA, with his beef with the association being perfectly valid in a system that refused to let its athletes profit.
Not everything needs a three-act structure, and if there was one film genre that usually doesn’t follow the template, it’s the documentary. But for Untold: Johnny Football, the feature suffers heavily from not having one. Once Manziel’s story gets to the NFL draft and the selection by the Browns, the film has barely 15 minutes left, a true shocker based upon what has already been widely known during his tenure with the Browns and subsequent leagues.
There’s some light skimming of the mental state of exhaustion Johnny had with the pro team and suggestion that it was the key piece that led the star to stay out all night all the time, calcify bad habits, and the like. But clearly, there’s more to the story and the delivery of both Duffy and Manziel does nothing to pull back the curtain on his struggles during this period or what he’s learned—if anything. If there were one figure in Netflix’s Untold series that would benefit from at least two, maybe three, parts it’s Manziel.
One part focusing on high school/college and the blitz put on by the media/NCAA, and another part on his rocky NFL experience and mental health issues/legal troubles would make this feel more well-rounded. Also missing are sorely needed contributions from teammates/coaches/team personnel (we only get Kliff Kingsbury), particularly at the NFL level that I imagine would paint a fuller picture. The infamous draft story of how an homeless individual allegedly influenced the Manziel selection alone to the owner could have been another fascinating coverage point in the doc to officially debunk or uphold.
At one point in Untold: Johnny Football, the bad-boy quarterback admits to putting in no effort to watch game tape on iPad, hilariously forming a “O” with his hand to punctuate it. And while the documentary is not as lazy as its star was when it came to studying, it coasts more than digs deep.