Johnny Manziel reveals his top CFB players to watch and other takeaways

Q: Drew Allar and Miller Moss – did you get a chance to see either of those quarterbacks?

JM: I think Miller Moss has been waiting and biding his time for the right moment to get his chance to be “the man.”

Then you get a chance to go out and play in a virtually prime-time game in the first week of the season and make a substantial amount of plays (when push comes to shove) that your team needed you to make.

I don’t think you can walk out of that stadium and be more confident than Miller Moss was the other night.

Q: Colorado has a couple of players on the Heisman list: Travis Hunter and Shedeur Sanders. Do you have any thoughts on either of them?

JM: I think the one thing they have is the ability to be seen every week. If I were Shedeur Sanders, I would hand the ball to Travis Hunter every week.

In the Heisman race, they’re kind of going up against each other a little bit, but for Colorado to be good this year, they’re going to have to get past those two guys and they’re going to have to do something extremely special.

Whenever you’re throwing five-yard routes, and Travis Hunter is able to get them into the end zone, as a quarterback sitting there, you have to feel really good to have a guy like that.

The fact that they can’t run the ball is going to put more pressure on Shedeur. But if he can go out there and keep making plays week in and week out, who’s to say this guy can’t throw for yards in this offense? I think Shedeur’s best chance is to feed Travis Hunter, and they’re going to need and rely on him a lot.

It’s a lot of pressure, but if he’s up to it, I think he can give himself a realistic chance to see if his defense can hold up.

Obviously, you’re going to have to be able to hang in there in some of these games, and they were in a close race in Week 1.

Q: And do you really know what it’s like to have a reliable security blanket in Mike Evans, playing with him?

JM: Absolutely. And I think Travis is as special a player as any we’ve seen. Not only does he play on both sides of the ball, but he plays receiver as well. This kid is making catches, and his speed and quickness in getting in and out of these fast breaks is something that really stands out on film and on the pages every week that you watch him play.

Q: How good was Mike Evans in college?

JM: Mike Evans was a kid who, as a freshman, was still learning a lot about football and what it was. He was a great basketball player. And as it went on every spring, every fall, this kid became an absolute monster. And you could legitimately throw a screen that was a 0-yard pass and it would just knock somebody to the ground. He has the speed to be able to escape that.

Evans was truly one of those once-in-a-generation college football players and someone I was very lucky to be able to share the field with.

Q: So when you first came to camp, he was completely inexperienced and a novice?

JM: He and I came in and had a chance to shape a lot of our game through scouting. He had only played a couple years of football when he came to Texas A&M, and we recruited him not to go play basketball anywhere.

When he came here, I think his size, his build and his physical talent were very present, but still, there’s a lot more to it than that: running routes and playing receiver.

During our redshirt year, we got a little glimpse of what he and I would do later on. When we got the chance to play on Saturdays, we showed ourselves to be a raw product that excelled and improved exponentially over those first two years.

Mike Evans and the Bucs are currently considered long-shots for the Super Bowl in many of the… The best NFL betting apps. But who knows! Anything can happen this football season.