Michael Sam: Openly Gay Football Player May Slip Out Of NFL Draft

Michael Sam will likely become the NFL’s first openly gay player, but he may have to wait beyond the NFL draft to do it.

The Missouri defensive end came out as gay earlier this year, after the conclusion of his senior season.

While he racked up 11 1/2 sacks and 19 tackles for a loss and earned SEC Defensive Player of the Year honors, many draft experts now think Sam won’t hear his name called at all during the draft. Michael Sam is viewed as a “tweener,” too small to play defensive end and not nimble enough to slide over to linebacker.

His performance at the combine didn’t help much. Michael Sam failed to impress, running a 40-yard dash in the 4.8 to 4.9 range and doing fewer bench-press reps than even his teammate Henry Josey, who goes 5-foot-8, 194 pounds.

From Fox Sports:

“Nate Silver’s new FiveThirtyEight blog this week crunched the usual Nate Silver numbers, and judged Sam as a likely sixth-ish round projection, and that sixth-ish-round projections are a coin flip to be one of the final 64 or so names off the board. But the more damning nuggets came via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday, which polled 21 anonymous scouts to gauge the temperature on Sam — and to call the results ‘lukewarm’ would be kind.”

But even if Michael Sam isn’t picked in the NFL draft, he seems to have been rated highly enough by several general managers that he will more than likely be picked up when rookie free agency begins.

Sam said it doesn’t matter to him when he is taken, or how.

“The coaches know that I’m a great football player,” Sam told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “Where I go, it doesn’t matter. As long as I get to play and put a jersey on my back, it’s just awesome. I’m going to be proud of wherever I go.”

However he gets taken, one thing is almost certain — Michael Sam will be the NFL’s first openly gay player, sooner or later.