One month short of two years.

That's how long it took to go from lighting the wick, through wild anticipation of the Big Bang, through modified expectations, to the fizzle-out.

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats finally confirmed in late March 2017 that Johnny Football, the lightning rod who polarizes football, legal systems and social media, had been on their CFL negotiation list for years.

The Montreal Alouettes announced in late February 2019 that Johnny not-CFL-Football had been released for non-specific reasons at the command of the league and would not be allowed to sign with anyone else in Canada.

Poof, gone. Another story without an arc. Another supernova without the candle-power. Another Heisman humbled by fewer downs.

And in the end, the Johnny Manziel era will last a lot longer in Hamilton than in Montreal, and likely anywhere else in pro football. That is, as long as Jamaal Westerman is healthy and harassing quarterbacks and the Tiger-Cats continue to draft as well as they recently have.

From the start, this was asset management and the Ticats managed the file deftly, altering courses several times to fit the circumstance. How very CFL.

When they neg-listed Manziel, they were still counting on Zach Collaros, so Manziel was a futures stock. When they worked him out in the late summer of 2017, they didn't know Jeremiah Masoli would become Jeremiah Masoli, so Manziel was a potential near-horizon starter. When they ignored his agent's contract timeline threat in January 2018, they knew the Manziel camp had nowhere else to go. When they signed him just before training camp, he was depth protection and a June Jones redevelopment project. When Masoli continued to shine and Manziel — although otherwise well-behaved — didn't show an excess of work ethic, they played on the Alouettes' desperation to draw to an inside straight and upped the ante to the most that Manziel was ever going be worth in Canada: first-rounders in the 2020 and 2021 CFL drafts, plus Westerman and receiver Chris Williams.

Offensive linemen Tony Washington and Landon Rice went with Manziel, but Rice was soon back in Hamilton. So Montreal is now left with Washington, no Manziel, gaping draft holes and as GM Kavis Reed said, "an educated risk" that did not work out.

Williams, sidelined with a season-ending injury, didn't show much and won't be back. Westerman played eight games before he was hurt but will return this year to give the Ticats defensive line two Canadian impact players.

The Als may downplay the value of the picks they surrendered, but consider this: their quarterbacks were in constant peril because they lack the consistent stellar Canadian linemen of their golden era; and over the past three years the Ticats' first-round picks have included both their current starting guards plus Connor McGough, who's in the defensive-end rotation at defensive end.

The Ticats didn't pay Manziel much, he didn't cost them any players or draft choices, and they converted him into real, and potential, assets. Put that all together, and the Manziel trade is among the best swaps this team has made this century.

The CFL was not going to be the soft landing ground Manziel had expected. He saw that, and flat-out admitted it, only a couple of days into training camp. Still, he conducted himself well in public here, recognized that he would "never outrun my past," and elicited no complaints from his teammates. But those teammates, to a man, understood who their meal ticket was and it was the other J.M.

There is a lot of conjecture about what Manziel did — it's probably more what he didn't do — to warrant his expulsion from the league. Some of the talk wonders if he chose not to abide by his agreement with the CFL (to take counselling and certain medication) in order to secure his contractual freedom.

Now that he has actually thrown passes in real games for the first time in three years, opportunities in the form of the AAF and the looming XFL should create some kind of bidding war for his services, if only for the publicity he would bring either NFL-shadowed league. While Randy Ambrosie exiled him, the commissioner should actually hope he does well, for the sake of CFL 2.0 comparison optics.

Whatever Manziel does now is of no real concern to the Ticats. He brought them a little positive attention from south of the border, didn't disrupt anything here and left the team with some important assets.

smilton@thespec.com

905-526-3268 | @miltonatthespec

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