Ray Farmer Discusses Decision to Draft Johnny Manziel

The Cleveland Browns' renovated front office will attempt to set the franchise on a prosperous new path when the 2016 NFL draft begins Thursday evening, but one member of the old guard shed some light on one of the team's most notorious errors in advance of the annual selection process. 

Speaking to CBS Sports Radio's Damon Amendolara on Monday evening (via CBSSports.com's Will Brinson), former Browns general manager Ray Farmer explained the process that led the team to select embattled quarterback Johnny Manziel with a first-round pick in the 2014 draft:    

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There are very few decisions made in anybody's draft in a vacuum. The GM very, very, very rarely says "Hey I'm taking this guy and there's nothing anybody else can say about it." The head coach doesn't do it, the owner doesn't do it. In that case, I would tell you that there were a lot of conversations that happened and the selection was made.

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While Farmer doesn't offer tremendous insight into who signed off on the pick, he said he's well aware of the way general managers are perceived when they strike out on certain prospects. 

"It's the reality of the National Football League that whoever gets selected, that name is going to get attributed to the general manager," Farmer said, per Brinson. "Whether he selected that guy or not. So for good, worse, better, doesn't really matter, Johnny Manziel is mine, and I have to own it."

But according to Browns owner Jimmy Haslam, it was a directive from Farmer that led the team to spend a first-round pick on Manziel in the first place. 

"Ray's the one that picked Johnny Manziel," Haslam said in 2014, per Cleveland.com's Mary Kay Cabot. "We took the top-rated quarterback on our board when he was available. That was solely Ray's call, not my call."

Regardless of who did or didn't give the final go-ahead, the Browns have bigger issues to deal with at this point that don't concern Farmer. 

Cleveland has rather infamously struck out on first-round picks over the past five years—see: Trent Richardson, Phil Taylor, Barkevious Mingo, et al.—and it needs a strong showing this year under the leadership of executive vice president of football operations Sashi Brown and chief strategy officer Paul DePodesta in order to reform the team's image. 

Manziel, meanwhile, has far more serious things to worry about than football. CNN.com's Jill Martin, citing Dallas County court records, reported the 23-year-old was formally indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge stemming from an alleged assault of his ex-girlfriend on January 30, and he faces up to a year in jail if convicted.