One of our British colleagues walked into the sports department of The National today and said: “Johnny Football is a joke!”

Referring to the Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel, Heisman Trophy winner, first-round draf pick — and a badly beaten man in his first NFL start, a 30-0 victory by the Cincinnati Bengals.

He had stayed up late (the UAE is nine hours ahead of EST) to watch Manziel’s first game, wondering what all the fuss was about.

Yes, the NFL gets some attention all the way over here in the Arabian Peninsula. Among North American expats, of course, but also among a significant number of European expatriots, too, who saw NFL Europe or some of the NFL highlights packages.

And they noticed Johnny Manziel’s first NFL start was a disaster. As one ESPN correspondent wrote: “Manziel looked like a junior high school kid trying to play a professional team.”

Which is pretty much what our British colleague said.

Some have suggested all along that Manziel would have a difficult time adapting to the NFL after his electrifying and controversial career at Texas A&M.

He moved around in the pocket a lot, at A&M, and improvised and made things happen with his legs, too. And for some, it was hard to imagine him sliding comfortable into the complicated yet deeply conservative NFL systems.

Game 1 would demonstrate he is not ready.

Our colleague suggested that anyone in Cleveland who had anything to do with taking Manziel with the 22nd pick of the 2014 draft should be fired.

And, later, we learned than another Englishman, whose team was playing in the semifinals of the newsroom fantasy team, had started Manziel at quarterback.

(He lost the fantsy game by 60-plus points.)

Manziel said it was the worst game of his career, and no one seemed eager to debate that declaration.

To be fair, lots of very good quarterbacks have had bad debuts or very rough rookie seasons. Go to footballreference.com and have a look. Peyton Manning was 3-13 in his first season. Brett Favre couldn’t get on the field, as a rookie: His total stat line: 0-for-4 with two interceptions. John Elway was 1-for-8 for 12 yards and an interception in his debut, which the Denver Broncos won 14-10 only after Steve DeBerg replaced Elway.

Playing quarterback in the NFL is hard. Very hard. Especially for rookies, who generally don’t get much of a chance unless their team is bad — which means their chances of success are even lower than usual.

And now Manziel can tell you about it.

The question is … is he on his way to being a bust? Perhaps a bust with attitude/behavior problems, too?

Probably, he needs something like a full season before an accurate assessment of his chances can be made. Question is, will he get it?

Our local NFL fan already has decided that the answer is “no”.