Johnny Manziel poses with his jersey after being selected by the Cleveland Browns at the 2014 NFL Draft at Radio City last week in New York. Manziel's jersey has taken over as the top seller in the NFL. (Photo: Gregory Payan, AP) Story Highlights Sales of Manziel jerseys lead all rookies, and he's even claimed top spot among all NFL players 
 
 Browns, seeking to minimize distractions, barred national media from his mini-camp debut 
 
 One radio analyst says if Manziel plays well, he'll surpass LeBron James in local celebrity status 
 
 CLEVELAND – Francine Clark's Mother's Day present came five days late. 
 
 Clark's grown sons drove to FirstEnergy Stadium last Sunday, hoping to snag their mother a Johnny Manziel jersey, a perfect gift for a longtime season ticket holder. But the Clark boys discovered they were too late – the team shop was all out. Mom's jersey wouldn't be ready till Friday. 
 
 Clark showed up Friday morning, shortly after the store opened, and grabbed her new No. 2. She slipped in on over her shirt, put on a new Browns ball cap and hurried outside to take her first picture in front of the stadium wearing her new gear. She threw back her head as she made Manziel's cash money hand sign. 
 
 This isn't Clark's first jersey. Her collection at home in Solon, Ohio, includes three other first-round quarterbacks: Tim Couch's No. 2; Brady Quinn's No. 10 and Brandon Weeden's No. 3. 
 
 "Hopefully this one will be forever," Clark said. 
 
 Clark was one of more than a dozen Browns fans to filter through the team shop in the first hour it was open Friday morning, nearly all of them leaving with a jersey. White ones with brown letters. Brown ones with white letters. Women's jerseys. Children's jerseys. Double XL men's jerseys. 
 
 All of them with Manziel's name across the back. 
 
 "It's been wonderfully crazy," store manager Mary Darmstadt said. "And it will be crazy all summer." 
 
 The main display table inside the shop is all about Manziel, with two different Manziel Nike T-shirts, two racks of jerseys, and a variety of draft-related items. 
 
 MORE: Manziel texted Browns night of NFL draft 
 
 Want to buy a jersey for cornerback Justin Gilbert, the No. 8 pick? You'll have to get that specially made. Want a veteran player, such as Pro Bowl players Joe Haden or Joe Thomas? You'll find those closer to the back. If you really want a deal, jerseys for Trent Richardson, Colt McCoy and Weeden are 75 percent off. 
 
 "I've had one or two orders for Gilbert. A few people who want their names personalized – their name with No. 2. But mostly it's Johnny, Johnny, Johnny," Darmstadt said. 
 
 MISTAKES?: Herm Edwards says Browns have mishandled Manziel 
 
 Manziel's jersey remains the top seller among all NFL rookies, and according to data from NFLShop.com, Manziel has the league's top-selling jersey of any player since April 1 – more merchandise sold than Russell Wilson, Peyton Manning, Colin Kaepernick and Tom Brady. 
 
 More people have purchased a Manziel jersey online than ordered those for Tim Tebow, Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck on their draft weekends combined. 
 
 Not bad for a backup. 
 
 But such is the dichotomy in Cleveland, where Manziel is already the biggest sports star in town a week after the Browns drafted him with the No. 22 pick. 
 
 Is Manziel the face of the franchise, as the merchandise rush and season ticket sales show? Or is he a faceless rookie backup quarterback, which is the message out of team headquarters in Berea, where the franchise is trying to keep Manziel out of the spotlight. 
 
 That seems like an impossible task. In the last week alone, Manziel has appeared on a regional cover of Sports Illustrated and was the main topic of conversation on Cleveland sports radio. His mini-camp debut generated so much national interest that the Browns chose to shut the doors to all non-local outlets. Even the Cleveland media was limited to a 20-minute viewing period and brief news conference on Saturday. 
 
 "This guy is a huge megastar. You knew that when you drafted him. If he plays well, he's just going to become a bigger star and the media train isn't going to stop," said Adam "The Bull" Gerstenhaber of 92.3 The Fan radio. 
 
 "If he doesn't play well, this is all going to go away eventually. To try to stop the train or the circus or whatever you want to call it, it seems foolish for the Browns." 
 
 VIDEO: Manziel not fazed by backup role 
 
 Skip Ad Ad Loading... x Embed x Share Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel is happy to get to work and prove himself to his new team. 
 
 Gerstenhaber estimated about 75 percent of his listeners are all-in with Manziel, and have embraced the arrival of a bona fide celebrity athlete. Though Manziel is just the latest in a string of first-round draft pick quarterbacks – and is vying to become the 21st Browns starter since 1999 – he carries a cache unlike any Cleveland athlete since LeBron James. 
 
 "LeBron was the one chance to win a championship, and he was a local guy. I don't know if Manziel is quite as big as that yet, but I will tell you, if he plays well, I think it will beat LeBron. I really do. If he leads the Browns to the playoffs, it would be bigger than LeBron," Gerstenhaber said. "If the Browns win a Super Bowl, there is going to be bedlam like you've never seen in your life in this town. I can't even imagine it." 
 
 Internally, the Browns are trying to keep that pressure off Manziel by having him go into training camp in July behind Brian Hoyer on the depth chart. Head coach Mike Pettine and general manager Ray Farmer have said before and after the draft that they would be fine with having a rookie quarterback, even one as touted as Manziel, wait to play – and they might even prefer it. 
 
 It's a strategy that worked in Green Bay, where Aaron Rodgers initially backed up Brett Favre, and San Diego, where Philip Rivers waited behind Drew Brees. But neither of those players entered the league with as much fanfare as Manziel, or were as immediately embraced by the city as Manziel has been in Cleveland. 
 
 Former NFL head coach Herm Edwards told USA TODAY Sports he can appreciate the Browns' plans to limit Manziel's media availability, given the spectacle he watched happen in 2012 with the New York Jets and their uber-popular backup quarterback Tim Tebow. Pettine was the Jets defensive coordinator at the time. 
 
 But that's from a PR perspective, Edwards said. It will be a different issue to prepare the Browns' locker room for Manziel's massive off-field impact. Edwards said it reminds him of Joe Montana's arrival in Kansas City in 1993, when Edwards was an assistant on Marty Schottenheimer's staff. Edwards recalled talking to players such as Derrick Thomas and Marcus Allen and Neil Smith – huge NFL stars, but not like Montana. 
 
 "You think you're famous? No, he's a celebrity," Edwards said. 
 
 At least one fan back at the team shop wasn't caught up in Manziel mania. Michael Rotman was not looking for Manziel gear. The Cleveland resident was waiting to get a custom jersey made as a gift for his uncle's 70th birthday. Rotman said buying a Manziel jersey now was just too much of a risk. 
 
 "No way. ... I don't trust the system," Rotman said. "Honestly, I'm a little jaded. I wait to get excited. I'm not excited now. I'm apprehensive, but I'm a Browns fan, and I always will be. I'd like to see us win more than eight games. If we won nine games, I'd be a happy fan, you know?" ||||| CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Browns quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains said in a radio interview Thursday that a text from Johnny Manziel during the draft helped inspire owner Jimmy Haslam to trade up for him. 
 
 "We're sitting there and they keep showing Johnny on T.V. and Johnny and I are texting and he shoots me a text and he says, 'I wish you guys would come get me. Hurry up and draft me because I want to be there. I want to wreck this league together.' 
 
 "When I got that text, I forwarded it to the owner and to the head coach (Mike Pettine),'' Loggains said Thursday on Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly on Arkansas ESPN. "I'm like 'this guy wants to be here. He wants to be part of it.' As soon as that happened, Mr. Haslam said, 'pull the trigger. We're trading up to go get this guy.''' 
 
 The Browns traded up from No. 26 to No. 22 and turned Johnny Football into Johnny Cleveland. 
 
 "It shows you what type of competitor the kid is and I got to spend so much time with him leading up to this process,'' said Loggains, a former Arkansas Razorback. "I feel like I know him very well. I had a good relationship with him. That's the type of kid this guy is. He wants to do well. He's got a chip on his shoulder and he decided to be a Brown.'' 
 
 Loggains revealed that the coaching staff was involved throughout the draft, and that he was pulled into the war room whenever they came close to drafting a quarterback. 
 
 "It's not a cone of secrecy whatsoever,'' he said. "We were very involved, which is always good for a coaching staff when you get to choose your own quarterback.'' 
 
 A source said Loggains never meant to make it sound like Haslam made the pick instead of general manager Ray Farmer. "Farmer definitely made the call,'' the source said. Instead, he wanted to convey how excited everyone in the organization was -- all the way to the top -- that Manziel was so eager to come here. 
 
 Haslam corroborated that during a speech on Monday. 
 
 "Ray's the one that picked Johnny Manziel," Haslam told the Pro Football Hall of Fame luncheon club on Monday. "We took the top-rated quarterback on our board when he was available. That was solely Ray's call, not my call." 
 
 He added that although "Ray gets a lot of input, Ray's the one that decided to make the trade, Ray's the one that picked Johnny Manziel, Ray's the one that made those calls and that's his job. I want to make that very clear.'' 
 
 Loggains also revealed the Browns tried to trade up to No. 11 with the Titans and No. 16 with the Cowboys. 
 
 "Mr. Haslam and coach Pettine had called me down to the draft room a couple of times throughout the night and we had almost made trades with Tennessee and Dallas and backed out,'' he said. "...We were sitting there and coach Pettine keeps texting me, and we're going back and forth and we're going 'hey does Dallas take him here, no they won't. Does St. Louis take him at 13?' We knew we had to get in front of the Chiefs (at No. 23) because we knew they would draft him.'' 
 
 Finally, when the Browns got down to No. 22, they pulled off the trade with Philadelphia to select the former Heisman Trophy winner, sending a third-round pick to the Eagles. 
 
 "Coach texted me and said, 'we're making the trade, we're moving up' so at that point I knew I was summoned to the draft room to get on the phone and tell him he was going to be a Cleveland Brown,'' said Loggains. 
 
 Loggains knew as early as February that Haslam was enamored with the former Texas A&M product. 
 
 "When I decided to take this job in Cleveland, I knew that our owner liked Johnny a lot,'' said Loggains. "I think I worked out 14 quarterbacks, went to their schools, their high schools and worked them out, ate dinner with them, brought them to Cleveland. Once we finished all of our evaluations, it was Johnny's name at the top of the list and there was everyone else, so I knew we needed a quarterback and we were very high on Johnny.'' 
 
 As the draft grew closer, Loggains had an even stronger feeling Johnny Football would be sitting across from him every day in his meeting room. 
 
 "I knew definitely that Johnny was someone that was very high on our board and someone that was in our discussions the weeks leading up to the draft,'' said Loggains. "I knew there was a good chance if he was there at some point we were going to take him or even move up to go get him.'' 
 
 Then came the text heard 'round the war room.
– Johnny Manziel, who in 2012 became the first freshman to earn the Heisman Trophy, didn't want to wait around during the NFL draft. So he texted the Cleveland Browns' quarterbacks coach, Dowell Loggains, asking him to "hurry up and draft me because I want to be there. I want to wreck this league together." Loggains told the story this week on Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly in Arkansas, cleveland.com reports. "When I got that text, I forwarded it to the owner and to the head coach," Loggains said. "I'm like, 'this guy wants to be here.'" That's when owner Jimmy Haslam "said, 'Pull the trigger. We're trading up to go get this guy.''' The team did so, trading up to No. 22 from No. 26. Manziel's new jersey is already the best-selling NFL jersey since April 1, USA Today notes.