Cleveland Browns lose first preseason game to the Detroit Lions, 13-12.

A taunting Detroit Lions fan asks the question only prolonged playing time will answer about heralded Cleveland Browns rookie quarterback Johnny Manziel.

(John Kuntz/The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Maybe it's just me, admittedly an old guy -- but young at heart and in maturity.

But critics of Johnny Manziel remind me of the authorities in the Woody Allen movie "Bananas," saying with distaste, "We'll make an example of this ... hepcat."

These people are bad news, man.

Moving past my distant doo-wop past, as a columnist looking for the big news, I can choose at Browns training camp between two distinguishable narratives.

There is the story of Brian Hoyer, the local kid with grit, coached by the famous high school coach, Chuck Kyle, coming off an ACL injury, and playing for the team of his boyhood dreams after years of understudying the legend (Tom Brady.) It is a very good story.

The other story takes place at the crossroads of celebrity, sports, the 24/7 news cycle and social media. It is the Johnny Football phenomenon, its tentacles reaching into every nook and cranny of NFL America, as ESPN prematurely spread the word this week through every Middlesex village and farm that Johnny Football was coming.

Whenever it becomes true and Manziel does become the starter, it is certainly the bigger and quite possibly the better story. There will be ka-booms all around, whether he succeeds or not.

ESPN's Bob Holtzman wrote that Hoyer is a known quantity. This is surely true. He won't do anything foolish. He will give the team a professional base. He won't forget his galoshes.

But, as Holtzman said, Manziel is brimming with possibilities.

Jump passes. (When did you last see a jump pass? In the era of high-top black shoes and single-bar facemasks when Browns-Detroit was for the championship?) The next one will likely be from Manziel, not for style reasons but from necessity and creativity.

How about sidearm throws from the football playbook of Bernie Kosar and from the baseball wiliness of Luis Tiant? Kosar, however, was strong-minded and hard to handle by offensive coordinators; Manziel and Kyle Shanahan have been a good fit thus far.

And there will be scrambles, rambles, rumbles and bumbles.

Don't tell me the Johnny Football extravaganza is too loud and too brash, not with a solid wall of sound "enhancing" Browns fans' game day experience and the NFL hawking its wares all over the weekly calendar by the time the season is through. The NFL is not a league, and Manziel is not a player, to hide their respective lights under a bushel.

Some fans' suspect that Manziel's college days of daring will end quickly in the superhero world of NFL size and athletic ability. If Manziel scrambles too much, it will get late early out there. They seemingly channel Yogi Berra and afternoon shadows, but they actually allude to their own deepest fears in what former Browns general manager Phil Savage called the "woe is us" attitude.

The other shoe will always drop, and on them or their team, probably in the form of the cleated foot of Ndamukong Suh. The Terminator is always lurking out there, without the Schwarzenegger accent, but bearing a striking resemblance to James Harrison.

Many more fans, though, are just waiting to be thrilled by Manziel, in which case they have to like the small sample they've see in a controlled scrimmages and in a quarter-and-change of exhibition-game play.

What Manziel did in the SEC, the best college football conference in the land, was not a result of pixie dust.

Nor was Purdue's Rose Bowl appearance at the start of this century with similarly undersized Drew Brees anything but the residue of design. With Brees, it was a sophisticated bubble-screen game.

With Manziel it was not playground ball. I cited statistics at the Browns' Akron scrimmage to show Manziel actually was excellent in the pocket at Texas A&M. He completed nearly three of every four passes from it for 27 of his 63 career touchdown throws.

As for his funky release points, unorthodox also does not have to mean ineffective. The slot variability, getting the ball out sidearm, lets him bend passes around onrushing tacklers.

Manziel usually knew his personnel, too. When he threw jump balls, it was for his extremely athletic fellow first-round draftee Mike Evans. It is a shame that neither Manziel nor Hoyer will likely have the services of the swift, rangy Josh Gordon, who had a season for the history books before facing a probable suspension.

Unlike Hoyer, unlike Kosar, but much like the bigger Colin Kaepernick and the as-small Russell Wilson, Manziel also offers undreamed-of routes of escape. Every blocking scheme does not have to be perfect. When he can improvise, it is sometime s better that they are not.

Fifteen seasons have passed of basically the same 21-13/17-9 loss, with the odd end-of-season blowout mixed in.

And now heeeere's Johnny, or at least Johnny is waiting in the wings -- going out of the ordinary (Indiana Jones dodging the boulder), into the thrilling (seriously, isn't it about time, Browns fans?) and on to the real-time, real-life version of a fantasy. Or maybe a nightmare.

Either way, the ride will be memorable.