Reports say Johnny Manziel lied to Browns about the bye week video

Once again, the cover-up is worse than the crime.

The Cleveland Browns benched Johnny Manziel after a video of him partying over the bye week surfaced, a move that was confusing to some. How could the Browns bench him for partying over the bye week, something many of their other players certainly did too?

[Yahoo Daily Fantasy: $10 could win you $50K in our $350K contest for Week 12]

Mike Pettine explained that in part on Wednesday (basically, they expect more out of the quarterback) but apparently left out a big detail: Manziel lied to the team about the video, and apparently wanted others to lie about it too.

NFL Network's Ian Rapoport said that when the Browns asked Manziel about the video, "he was not honest about where and when it came from." On Fox, Jay Glazer said Manziel lied about how old the video was and asked friends to lie about it too.

On the heels of those reports, it makes perfect sense why the Browns took the action they did. Now it's even a little more interesting that the Browns were so adamant that Manziel could get another chance. When it seemed his biggest crime was not lying low, as Rapoport said the Browns asked him to do, it was logical that they could go back to him at some point. But if the reports are true that Manziel lied, it shows how invested the Browns are that Manziel could lie to them and yet Pettine still is publicly saying the benching was not a dead end.

This was the most regrettable bye week trip ever.

More NFL on Yahoo Sports

- - - - - - -

Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab