Naylor: Much-anticipated Manziel show about to begin When Montreal Alouettes quarterback Johnny Manziel starts his first CFL game Friday night, nobody knows what to expect of the former Heisman Trophy winner and that’s exactly what makes his story so intriguing, TSN CFL Insider Dave Naylor reports.

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It’s hard to know what to expect of Johnny Manziel when he starts his first CFL game Friday night for the Montreal Alouettes.

Which is exactly what makes his story so intriguing.

For it’s not just Manziel’s athletic ability he will take onto the field with him at Percival Molson Stadium. It’s also his story.

A story of greatness, a story of success, a story of celebrity, of downfall, of human struggle and, finally, a shot at redemption.

It’s a story that began with his rapid rise to fame as the first and only freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, one that tracked his well-documented downfall in the NFL and his battles with addiction and through what he has coined The Comeback, a process that began in earnest last summer when he worked out secretly for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at a facility in Buffalo, N.Y.

That’s how far back the anticipation about Manziel in the CFL goes, a process that continued last fall when the league set guidelines for him to meet before it would approve his contract, through an occasionally tense negotiation with Hamilton last winter, his going public about his struggles with mental health and last-ditch attempts to land an NFL job and then when he finally crossed the border in May to join the Tiger-Cats.

But Johnny Manziel in Hamilton proved to be little more than a tease as the 25-year-old sat in the backup role, the fans and the media pining to see him play while the Tiger-Cats determined otherwise. The Tiger-Cats eventually decided that Manziel needed to play and the best opportunity for that to happen was in Montreal, coincidentally for the same head coach in Mike Sherman who recruited him to Texas A and M not all that long ago.

And yet through it all, the public fascination with Manziel has never subsided, his story gripping the public with the kind of power not unlike that of golfer Tiger Woods.

Though college football produces a new crop of stars every year and the NFL world moves on quickly from those who crash and burn, something about Manziel has stuck, which is why his trade from Hamilton to Montreal on July 22 was treated as mainstream news in the U.S. and was among the most-read stories on mainstream sports websites such as ESPN.

Of course, big names and success in the CFL haven’t always gone hand-in-hand for all kinds of reasons, so in that sense Manziel will be battling against history.

In terms of recent Alouette history, he’s playing for a team that has lost 16 of its past 17 games dating back to last August or about the time Manziel was working out for the Tiger-Cats.

The Alouettes can insist all they want that they’re not looking for him to be their saviour but that’s certainly what it feels like, with the team having scored the fewest points in the league this season and giving up the most, with shrinking crowds at Percival Molson Stadium and the playoffs potentially soon out of sight.

It’s hardly an ideal set of circumstances for someone looking to jumpstart a career. But like a Manziel scramble, much of this has occurred on the fly without a script.

Expectations for Manziel should be modest, given how long he’s been with the Alouettes. But the curiosity factor will be enormous as people try to determine how much of the magic he once displayed is still there, and whether the legend of Johnny Football can truly take root in a new country.

It feels as though the CFL has been waiting on Johnny Manziel just as long as Manziel has been waiting on the CFL.

But now that wait is over.

And the much-anticipated show is about to begin.​