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In the Netflix documentary Untold: Johnny Football, former Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel revealed that he had thoughts of suicide after he crashed out of the NFL.
According to Manziel, he was intentionally trying to “self-sabotage” with extensive partying and money-spending, which he was then going to use as an “excuse” to kill himself.
Johnny Manziel reveals suicidal thoughts in new Netflix documentary Untold
“I got diagnosed as bipolar and I felt like it was the same as being called an alcoholic or a drug addict,” Manziel, who is now 30 years old, says in the documentary, which details his rise at Texas A&M and fall from the NFL.
“I think I was just running from problems. It was probably a $5 million bender. Direct self-sabotage, trying to burn this thing down. I had planned to do everything that I wanted to do at that point in my life. Spend as much money as I possibly could and then my plan was to take my life. Months prior, I went and bought a gun I knew I was going to use. I wanted to get as bad as humanly possible to where it made sense and it made it seem like an excuse and an out for me.”
The time that Manziel is referencing is likely when he was pictured in Las Vegas having lost a significant amount of weight compared to his playing days and sporting a slew of new tattoos.
Manziel said that a strained relationship with his family and feeling that the “ride was over” also contributed to his suicidal thoughts.
“Still to this day, I don’t know what happened, but the gun just clicked on me. I couldn’t fix what I had done; with Colleen, with the NFL, with A&M, everything. You know, at that point in time, I didn’t have much of a relationship with my family. The ride was over.”
While it’s unclear what exactly Manziel means there, his comments could be construed as him saying that he did, in fact, use that gun to try to take his life and that he was unsuccessful. Again, though, that’s not explicitly stated by Manziel at any point in the documentary.
Thankfully, Manziel preserved and now indicates that he’s far happier these days then he was back then. In the documentary, it’s clear that the former Heisman Trophy winner and first-round draft pick has done tons of self-reflecting in recent years.
Manziel originally took the sports world by storm when he became the starting quarterback for Texas A&M during the 2012 season, which saw him lead the Aggies to a famed win over the University of Alabama and win the Heisman Trophy.
Untold: Johnny Football will hit Netflix on Tuesday, August 8. You can check out the trailer for the third volume of the hit anthology docuseries below.