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Browns ready to release troubled QB Manziel

CLEVELAND — Johnny Manziel famously made his entrance into the NFL by putting on a Browns baseball cap and strutting onto the stage of New York’s Radio City Music Hall while rubbing his fingers together.

Money Manziel promised to “wreck this league.”

He wrecked all right.

The Browns indicated Tuesday that they’ve finally had enough of Manziel’s bad-boy behavior and intend to release the quarterback in March when the league begins its next calendar year. Manziel has run out of chances in Cleveland, where he was welcomed like a hero but will leave in disgrace to a cloudy future.

“We’ve been clear about expectations for our players on and off the field,” Browns vice president of football operations Sashi Brown said in a strongly worded statement that unofficially ended Manziel’s tumultuous two-year stint with the Browns. “Johnny’s continual involvement in incidents that run counter to those expectations undermines the hard work of his teammates and the reputation of our organization.

“His status with our team will be addressed when permitted by league rules.”

The Browns are done with him. It’s about time.

He tested their patience, betrayed their support and ultimately made the decision easy for them to kick a deflated Johnny Football out the door. They gave him every opportunity to succeed and Manziel still couldn’t behave.

He was a distraction, a disaster.

During his eventful time with Cleveland, Manziel showed flashes of being a competent player, but there were so many other disturbances that it became difficult to separate Johnny the Quarterback from Johnny the Joker.

One month after he was drafted with the 22nd overall pick, Manziel was photographed swigging champagne as he floated on an inflatable white swan in a nightclub’s pool in Austin, Texas. It was the first of many photos of Manziel that went viral on social media, but this one was the most memorable for being both bizarre and brash.

Before training camp opened in 2014, a clearly intoxicated Manziel was photographed talking into a money phone, and the Browns were disturbed by an image of him holding a rolled up dollar bill in a Las Vegas bathroom.

During his second exhibition game, Manziel flipped his middle finger toward Washington’s sideline as he jogged back to the huddle.

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