Johnny Bye-Bye
So history will record Johnny Manziel’s final game as a Hamilton Tiger-Cat came against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, although he never saw the field. A few days later, Manziel goes to Montreal is what is a make it or break it deal for Kavis Reed, and the floodgates holding back other trades breaking and seeing players like Adarius Bowman and Shawn Lemon moving on.
The Manziel trade in retrospect was maybe the easiest of calls. Montreal had been interested in trying to get next to Manziel since last fall when they got permission from Hamilton to work Manziel out. Mike Sherman knew Manziel when he was a redshirt freshman at Texas A&M and the interesting thing of this first third of the season was how Jeremiah Masoli rose to the challenge of having Manziel on the sideline and the accompanying pressure of producing or else lose his spot on the field.
Now Hamilton lost twice to the Riders, but blaming Masoli for not producing in those games is not really fair. Hamilton allowed a big run by Marcus Thigpen to score a touchdown in the first minute of the third quarter and then a punt return touchdown to seal up the win later on in the third.
Hamilton also had a couple of third down plays go south and a quick kick that probably worked much better in practice, but in those cases, an argument can be made the Riders outcoached Hamilton. Which brings us to this point.