2014 NFL Draft: Teddy Bridgewater’s fall takes a backseat to Johnny Manziel
He may have fallen in the draft, but Teddy Bridgewater’s draft night worked out just fine.
Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
It was 9:44 p.m. when the Teddy Bridgewater’s face flashed across the screen. If you hadn’t been paying close attention to ESPN’s broadcast, you may have missed it. For that brief moment in the middle of the first round, a smiling Bridgewater was in the spotlight. He was relaxed, and taking it all in.
Juxtapose that with Johnny Manziel, who was the subject of ESPN's cameras from the beginning of the night. The 2014 NFL Draft quickly turned into the fall of Johnny Manziel. How long would he stay on the board? Who would take him? Why was he falling?
Teddy Bridgewater
The cameras were stuck on Manziel, who tried to shrug off each pick that went by without his name being called. The nerves were obvious, though. His eyes darted across the green room, and a hesitant smile occasionally stretched across his face. Manziel’s fall was the best thing to happen to Bridgewater, because it made sure he wasn’t the subject of the added attention on an already stressful night.
At 10:42 p.m., Manziel’s wait mercifully came to an end. He breathed a sigh of relief as his name was called, and Radio City Music Hall erupted into cheers. Manziel was a Cleveland Brown, and the ESPN crew had to find something else to talk about.
Still, it seemed like Bridgewater was an afterthought, just like he was throughout the pre-draft process. It was more dramatic for college football’s most decorated quarterback to fall in the draft than it was for college football’s most polished pro prospect to fall in the draft. So Bridgewater waited and enjoyed a longer night than he was hoping for.
“From the moment we arrived here tonight, we had our mind made up that we were just going to enjoy this moment,” Bridgewater told Deion Sanders on NFL Network after being drafted. “You know, we were just going to live in the moment.”
"I felt very comfortable tonight that I was going to end up in Minnesota someway somehow."
At long last, Bridgewater's moment did come. Nearly three and a half hours after the Houston Texans were on the clock, the Minnesota Vikings made a trade with the Seattle Seahawks for the no. 32 pick. And at 11:28 p.m., the Vikings selected Bridgewater. After having a great workout in Minnesota and establishing a relationship with the Vikings' top decision makers, Bridgewater was confident this was the right place for him.
“I felt very comfortable tonight that I was going to end up in Minnesota someway somehow,” Bridgewater told Sanders after getting picked.
Somehow, it all worked out for Bridgewater. All of the criticism he received throughout the process, all of the nitpicking that was done about his pro day, and the long wait he had on draft night ended with him landing in possibly the best situation of any of the first-round quarterbacks. It's a place where he will have Adrian Peterson to hand the ball off to and Norv Turner as his offensive coordinator.
Bridgewater was accused of being too quiet during the pre-draft process, and his fall on Thursday was equally as inconspicuous. Now there is a list of teams that passed on him, 28 teams that thought he wasn’t good enough. But Bridgewater doesn’t seem worried about that. He knows this is where he’s supposed to be, and that’s how he managed to stay calm while it seemed like everything was falling apart on draft night.
“It was a long night, but my mom always tells me, ‘Be anxious for nothing,’” Bridgewater told Sanders with a smile on his face.
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