Johnny Manziel has become quite the elite player in college football and is one of the best according to some people. Yesterday, the ultimate showdown took place between SEC offenses when the Texas A&M Aggies took on the Alabama Crimson Tide. Manziel, Texas A&M’s quarterback is able to get it done in the air and on the ground, and in yesterday’s game, he threw for 464 yards and ran for 98 yards. The Aggies ultimately lost the game in the end, but put up an incredible fight from start to finish. The final score was 49-42 in favor of Alabama.
Alabama seemed to have no answer for Manziel throughout the game, and the only thing that they could do was retaliate with touchdowns of their own. The defense of both teams was almost not present, while both quarterbacks are also very elite players and like to rack up as many touchdowns as possible. This game was a rematch of the game that they played last year in which A&M pulled off the victory. In last year’s match A&M jumped ahead 20-0, and delivered Alabama their only loss of the season. This year was much of the same, although Alabama was able to hang on and win this one. They were finally safe from the unstoppable play of Manziel when Alabama’s quarterback AJ McCarron took a knee to end the game, leaving Manziel with nothing more to do, according to ABC News.
#Salute to @JManziel2 for kaepernicking….. Keep ballin the rest of the season!
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) September 15, 2013
The tough play of Johnny Manziel has even earned himself the nickname of Johnny Football. He has been known to get a bit too cocky at times too though, and received a penalty for excessive celebration earlier this season against Rice. He was also one of the leading candidates for the Heisman Trophy last year.
On Saturday the Alabama defense came to bury Johnny Manziel. Instead it made him a legend. http://t.co/go4GCKjMcu
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravisBGID) September 15, 2013
Alabama soon found that the only solution to stopping Manziel was to keep him off the field and keep their offense on the field for as long as possible. They were executing the strategy of “best defense is a good offense” in this case, hoping to see the aggressive play of Manziel as little as possible. AJ McCarron was quoted saying that “With the type of offense A&M has, you have to eat up some clock and pound the ball.” This seemed to be the only thing that Alabama could do in order to stop him, and it eventually worked. McCarron passed for 334 yards in Alabama’s win.
Manziel was virtually unstoppable for much of the game, setting records for passing yards and total offensive yards. He set the single-game school record for passing yards and put up the second-most total offensive yards in a game (562), second only to his own total (576) against Louisiana Tech last year, states ESPN.
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