Emmitt Smith is offering his thoughts on Johnny Manziel’s partying lifestyle choices, and I’m doubting it’s anything Manziel wants to hear right now.
“That lifestyle is going to be a short lifestyle — a short career lifestyle — if he continues that,” Smith said during an interview with 105.3 The Fan. “As we used to say, you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends of the stick. The candle gets small fairly quick. Johnny is going to have to figure it out.
“Hopefully he’s not doing anything to hurt himself outside of drinking — which is going to harm his body and harm his performance anyway. At the end of the day, he’s going to have to learn to manage those things.”
Smith concedes that he enjoyed the trappings of being young, rich and famous, but that, ultimately, it’s impossible to sustain.
“First, let’s recognize — Johnny is young. I was young and dumb myself at one point in time,” Smith said. “But maturity itself, and maturing as a professional athlete, is something that is required of every pro football player. I think right now Johnny Manziel is going to get a glimpse of what negative press can do for you. A lot of people think negative press is good press — or any press is good press. It’s not.”
Manziel is notorious for being in the party scene with every spare moment he has available and doesn’t seem to be bothered by anyone’s criticism of his lifestyle choices right now. The reality, however, is that successful quarterbacks today aren’t known to be constantly in the party scene. This isn’t to say that none of them do, but while Manziel freely advertises to party habits on social media sights everywhere, if any other successful NFL QB’s are partying, no one really knows about it. If Manziel doesn’t want the criticism, maybe he should try to stay a little more low key.
[h/t CBS Sports]