Michael Sam responds to report that NFL gave Rams ‘Hard Knocks’ pass
For almost two years now, rumors have floated in NFL circles about the league making back-channel deals with the then St. Louis Rams about drafting Michael Sam as a way to save face.
Now someone is reporting it. Howard Balzer of 590 The Fan in St. Louis wrote that the NFL made a deal with the Rams that they would be exempt from HBO’s behind-the-scenes training-camp series, “Hard Knocks” if they drafted Sam. The Rams took Sam with the third of their four seventh-round picks (pick No. 250 overall) in the 2014 NFL draft.
Shutdown Corner sent emails to the Rams and to the NFL for a response, but neither has responded yet.
Sam did not make the team out of training camp, despite an impressive preseason performance, and was cut without being re-signed to the practice squad. Sam never has appeared in an NFL regular-season game and currently is a free agent.
The timing of the report comes after the Rams — now in Los Angeles — were selected for the 2016 edition of “Hard Knocks.” NFL coaches typically loathe the idea of HBO and their ubiquitous camera crews setting up shop in their back pockets for weeks on end during such a critical team-building time, and yet the league has set up a deal with the show where a series of criteria can determine which team it selects to be on it.
It would make some sense that Balzer would write this now, given that there are some bitter ex-Rams employees who felt they were misled about their future with the team and the team’s future in St. Louis as recently as last fall. We’ve spoken to two of those former employees who have said as much, but that’s merely our speculation of how the Sam report might have come out now, almost two years after the fact.
You wouldn’t know that Rams head coach Jeff FIsher, whose public comments in 2014 made it clear he wanted no part of the show then, was upset by the statement he released when the show was announced on Wednesday.
“This is an exciting time for our franchise,” Fisher said. “’Hard Knocks’ will be an outstanding way to bring our fans into our training camp and preseason, and give a glimpse of the hard work and dedication of our players, coaches and staff as we prepare for the 2016 season.”
Start your conspiracy theories. Balzer’s report has made its way around the league in the past 24 hours. And even Sam saw it and responded on Twitter.
Clearly, Sam felt he got a raw deal there, having improved with every preseason game and received praise from the coaches publicly for his work in practice. He later was picked up by and added to the practice squad of the Dallas Cowboys (who sold his jersey in the pro shop, despite no other practice-squad member having theirs sold there) before being released two months later. Sam spent a brief spell with the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes last season before leaving the team.
But do we believe this theory? Well, here’s one possibly explanation — at the risk of sounding like NFL apologists.
There’s little doubt that the league was bracing, as Sam slid late into Day 3 of the 2014 draft, for the possibility that he’d go undrafted. As LGBT groups followed the Sam story closely, the feeling was that if Sam, the 2013 co-SEC Defensive Player of the Year, went undrafted it would reflect negatively on the league as if it was harboring homophobic tendencies in the way it picked its players.
And certainly it’s possible that league officials who were trying to get ahead of the story made a few calls to teams who owned seventh-round picks, asking if they had any plan to select Sam. The Rams, owners of four seventh-rounders, certainly had to be on the NFL’s short list of calls to make, although the Cowboys also owned four, which is interesting to note.
Is it possible that the Rams told the NFL that, yes, they were interested but that they were afraid of the media crush that would follow? That seems plausible. It’s possible that the NFL then said they could waive the Rams’ “Hard Knocks” duty that season if they took Sam (not the other way around), and if that’s the case, is it the most malicious thing?
No, but it’s not the best look, either. And given that the Cowboys were not “Knocks”-eligible that season, the NFL had no media safeguards to offer them. You would have to think they would have had some interest in Sam, some kind of solid and draft-worthy grade on him, to pick him up later that season. Instead, they made three of those seventh-round picks on other players before the Rams took Sam.
Either way, we have an idea how the sausage in this league might be made, and it’s not pretty if it’s true. And given that there are a lot of unhappy former Rams employees who will not be following the team to L.A. (and who likely feel like they were misled about either their place with the team or what owner Stan Kroenke’s true intentions with the team were), it’s very likely that one or more — Balzer cites multiple sources — would sing about the irony of this HBO business and the nature of the Sam pick two years ago.
If the league or team responds, we’ll let you know. We already know what Sam thinks of the whole deal.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
