Deion Sanders Blames Johnny Manziel's Girlfriend For The QB's Troubles

Deion Sanders Blames Johnny Manziel’s Relationship For His Downward Spiral

The story of Johnny Manziel will likely be the stuff of NFL rookie symposiums on the perils of celebrity and the all the pitfalls that pro ballers have to navigate once they enter the league.

This past week, news broke that Johnny threatened to kill both himself and his girlfriend after striking her several times during an argument. Johnny was subsequently dropped by his agent and is more-than-likely be dropped by the Cleveland Browns sooner-than-later.

Being that Manziel was lauded as a potentially star player, he has endeared himself to a legion of apologist who have made a smorgasbord of excuses for his irresponsible, petulant, and now criminal behavior.

One of these people appears to be Deion Sanders who opined to Cleveland.com on the reason that Johnny Football just can’t fly right:

“Johnny’s in love,” Sanders told cleveland.com at an NFL Network media availability Thursday. “And Johnny’s in love with something that’s crippling him right now. I understand it. And it upsets me that grownups don’t understand it. Because he feels as though this game don’t love him, the people in this game don’t love him, so the only thing that he associates with love is that thing that’s really inflicting a lot of pain on him and that’s his girlfriend.”

He went on to say:

“It’s hard to be a young kid,” said Sanders. “You have to go through these trials and tribulations to find yourself and that’s what he doing right now. He’s trying to find himself. And I empathize with him. Johnny’s girlfriend. That’s his issue.”

Deion then took to Twitter to clarify exactly what he was trying to say with those comments:

One must be very careful with how things are phrased, especially when it comes to domestic violence. “Primetime” got a lil’ reckless with his language and has to realize how he sounds when he makes statements like that. He verbalized a victim blaming mentality that MANY men carry with them in regards to violence against women. Such thoughts remove both agency and responsibility from Johnny and his actions. Essentially saying, “It’s that crazy b!t¢#’s fault that Johnny be whoopin’ her a$$!”, in 2016 people just aren’t here for it.

Image via WENN/AP