Kyle Shanahan Talks Cleveland And Manziel

If you would like to listen to the press conference yourself, you can find it here.

On Leaving Cleveland:

"Cleveland was a tough decision for me. One of the harder ones I've had to make. There was a lot of things I enjoyed about Cleveland, but anytime you've got a huge decision like I had -- and a tough one -- a lot of things go into it. Once the season ended, my wife and I, we talked about it a lot and -- I'm not going to get into any specifics exactly what those details were but there was a number of them. The more we thought about it, we truly felt that it was the best thing for our family to move on."

More On Leaving Cleveland:

"You make some tough decisions and Cleveland obviously was a tough decision for me. Nobody likes to be in the media. I'd rather just hide in the hole and never have to do this, ever. But it's part of the business and I understand that. But you can't make decisions just based off of that. You've got to make decisions of what you think is best for you, what's best for your family. If you believe it's right, then you live with it. You live with the consequences and you hope tough decisions end up working out. The fact that it's led me to Atlanta and I'm in this situation right now, I couldn't be any happier."

On Johnny Manziel and His Alleged Off-Field Issues:

"Johnny's a great guy and I think he does get a little bit of a bad rep with that, because Johnny worked very hard for me. I really enjoyed coaching him."

On Manziel Checking Into Rehab:

"I don't know what he's going through right now, but I think I'm confident Johnny will work it all out. I think he has a chance to have a good future."

My Takeaways

• Kyle said some good things about Manziel and was supportive of him. Does this reflect his actual opinion of Johnny? Who knows.
• Kyle is trying to be politically correct here and avoid saying anything that makes him look like a disgruntled employee or trouble waiting to happen.
• As Chris stated last week, it's pretty clear that Kyle was the primary source of the LaCanfora article.
• Kyle said "Nobody likes to be in the media" mere weeks after voluntarily going through the media to orchestrate his exit from Cleveland.
• Maybe things will be different in Atlanta than they were in both Washington and Cleveland. Maybe.