(SportsNetwork.com) - Johnny Manziel will reportedly make his first NFL start on Sunday for the Cleveland Browns. Brian Hoyer had started the first 13 games of the season for the Browns, who are trying to stay alive in the AFC playoff race at 7-6. Manziel saw his first real action in a relief role two weeks ago in a loss to Buffalo and guided the Browns to their lone touchdown in a 26-10 setback, but coach Mike Pettine decided to stay with Hoyer for another week. Hoyer again struggled last Sunday against Indianapolis and FOX Sports and NFL.com have reported that Manziel will get the nod for this weeks critical contest against Cincinnati. The Bengals lead the AFC North with a record of 8-4-1. On Monday, Pettine said he would meet with coaches before making a decision and would inform the players before any announcement. FOX Sports said Tuesday that both Hoyer and Manziel have been notified of the decision. Hoyer completed just 14-of-31 passes for 140 yards with two interceptions and no touchdowns in last weeks 25-24 loss to the Colts. In the past four games, he has thrown eight interceptions and just one touchdown pass. The Browns are 1-3 in that time. Over 13 games this season, Hoyer has thrown for 3,196 yards with 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. Manziel was 5-of-8 for 63 yards passing and ran for a touchdown against the Bills. He also fumbled. Cheap Air Max 1 Wholesale . The seventh-ranked Berdych wants to focus on the ATP Tour after helping the Czechs beat the Netherlands in the first round. Seeking their third straight Davis Cup title, the Czechs will rely again on veteran Radek Stepanek. Wholesale Lebron James Shoes . -- Adrian Peterson takes a look around the league and sees big money flying everywhere. http://www.wholesalenikeshoesclearance.c...x-97-shoes.html. 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Outlet Air Max 1 . -- Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu will be the Dodgers starting pitchers in their two-game season-opening series in Australia against the Arizona Diamondbacks.TORONTO – High above the ice, while practice took place on Thursday afternoon in Toronto, stood Maple Leafs general manager Dave Nonis. He watched his team work through various drills, hash out lingering points of confusion and prepare for the latest biggest game of the year - a Friday clash with the Philadelphia Flyers. Nonis can do nothing, however, to affect the fortunes of his skidding team at this very late stage in the season, one tumbling precariously close to another late-season collapse. "Eight games left," said Phil Kessel, shortly before departure to Philadelphia. "Weve got to win some games and get in the playoffs here." "This is desperation time," Nazem Kadri added. "Were playing for our lives, so weve got to go start acting like it." It was exactly two years ago that the 18-wheeler of 2012 officially crashed for good. Losing for a stunning 19th time in 24 games against the Carolina Hurricanes on a late March night, the Leafs were eliminated from the postseason, the culmination of an epic unraveling that would cost Ron Wilson his job. Can they avoid a similar and yet perhaps more stinging fate this time around? The thought would have been almost unthinkable only two weeks earlier, but with six straight losses - all in regulation - and not a single point gained, the Leafs are indeed facing that reality. With a blink or two of the eye, theyve been passed by seven teams, now trailing the Detroit Red Wings and Columbus Blue Jackets for the final two wild card positions, and are in danger of fumbling away a second-straight trip to the postseason. Aspirations of capturing second spot in the Atlantic Division and home-ice advantage in the first round have been replaced by simply making it outright. The shift has been stunning. "I know right now it seems like were at a low point, but we will come through it," said captain Dion Phaneuf, speaking after a near 90-minute practice in Toronto, his performance and subsequent absence afterward a point of much consternation just a couple days earlier. "Im not going to stand here and say that weve played well. We havent. We havent won games, but theres been stretches that weve done some good things, we just havent found a way to win a game and were going to have to do that Friday." The pressure to do so has never been higher. At some point, the pit of despair becomes just too deep to dig out of, the snowball too large to stop from rolling. That was the case for the club in 2012.dddddddddddd Four straight early February losses rapidly morphed into nine of 10, a souring fan-base and the sudden dismissal of Wilson. Things would get no better in the early days of Carlyles tenure with 10 more losses in the next 14 games, including the aforementioned knockout blow on March 27. "Theres pressure in any situation like this," said Kessel, "[but] weve just got to bounce back. If we can get a couple wins here, it would be positive for our group. Weve just got to keep going then." Fear of it all slipping away has seemingly seeped in. Head coach Randy Carlyle observed "tenseness" in the early stages of Tuesdays loss to St. Louis, pushing his club to be more assertive against Philadelphia, currently third in the Metropolitan Division - three points ahead of Toronto. "If youre going to stand there and youre in a street fight and youre not going to move, youre going to allow somebody to swing away, youre going to get hit," said Carlyle. "But if you move and try to avoid the hit and do what you do youre not going to get hit as many times, simple as that." Starts have become the most obvious foe to success during the two-week slide, early and often deep deficits too much to overcome. "So we have to move ourselves," said Carlyle. "We have to move our feet, we have to continue to move the puck effectively, we have to skate … Those are the things that we have to correct and we have to correct it for [Friday] night." "Were starting the games terrible," Kessel said. "Were getting down a couple goals. Theyre out-playing us the first half of the game and then all of a sudden we wake up and we come [back] and its just too late." The same could be said of their playoff fortunes. A collapse under these circumstances might pale in comparison to 2012, given their comfortable state with just weeks to go - they were up three points on the Montreal Canadiens and Tampa Bay Lightning as recently as two weeks ago, now trailing both by a wide margin - and the heightened expectations of a club seemingly on the rise. Its a sting they wont want to experience again. "It snowballed on us," Phaneuf said after that season-sealing loss to Carolina two years ago. "We lost a lot of tight games and we just could not recover or find a way out of it as a group." Will they this time around time around? The answer will come soon enough. ' ' '