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If you were hoping to see Johnny Manziel return to the NFL in 2016, you should probably go ahead and abandon those hopes now because it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

It seems that after five straight months of partying, Manziel has realized that it's not going to be possible for him to play football this season. A friend of Manziel's told the New York Post that Johnny's new plan is to take a year off and shoot for an NFL return in 2017.

"He knows he's hit rock bottom and he's giving himself a year to get sober and get ready for football. He wants to play again," the Manziel pal told the Post. "He really wants to turn things around and make people proud of him again. It's not going to end this way."

That last sentence echoed what Manziel himself said on July 19. In a video that was posted to Instagram, Johnny Football said his career wasn't going to end "like this."

"You all write about a day in my life and what goes on," Manziel said. "Here it is, no secrets, no hiding, I'm not what you read about. I'll be back. In time. It can't end like this. It won't."

After vowing to go sober on July 1, Manziel hinted that he'd like to return to football. The bad news for Manziel is that the team he wants to play for doesn't really want him.

In late July, Johnny Football said he wanted to play for the Cowboys. That's probably not going to happen though, because Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones shot down the idea on Friday during an interview with Tiki and Tierney on CBS Sports Radio.

"No, there's no chance," Jones said of signing Manziel. "Obviously Johnny needs to get his hands around his life. He needs to do the things that make him a good person off the field, I think, before he can ever have any chance of being successful in our league.

"He's a guy obviously from Texas that we've all followed and had an amazing career there at A&M. Unfortunately, he has some things that are holding him back not only as a football player, but as a person in life. We certainly hope he gets his hands around that because he's obviously a guy that's had some very unique successes in his life."

Anyway, according to his pal, it's probably a good thing that Manziel's taking a year off, because the last few years have been a little overwhelming for the former Heisman Trophy winner.

"The spotlight got to him," the friend said.

That's not hard to believe. Back in June, former Browns linebacker Karlos Dansby said that there's no way he could've handled the pressure that Manziel's had to handle since entering the NFL in 2014.

"I probably would have committed suicide. Ain't no telling what would have took place," Dansby told The Jim Rome Show. "I couldn't handle none of it. Nobody in that building could handle any of that pressure that man was under."

Taking a year off might actually be the best decision that Manziel's made over the past two years.