When Damien Woody, the former Jets offensive lineman and current ESPN analyst, first heard the news Sunday that Missouri star defensive lineman Michael Sam announced he is gay, this was his first thought: “The spotlight is on the NFL now.’’
“The NFL is not a progressive place when it comes to stuff like this,’’ Woody told The Post Sunday night. “It will be fascinating to see how the league handles this. The draft just got more interesting. This is not a player that nobody knows about.
“How is this going to affect his draft status? If I had to guess, I’m going to say negatively. I think teams will grade [Sam] down because of this, because they will look at this as a distraction. People are going to be closely monitoring where this guy is taken in the draft based on how he was rated as a player’’
Woody said the fact the NFL issued a statement “quick, fast and in a hurry’’ Sunday night is a sure sign the league is on high alert on how its teams handle Sam.
“The league wants to portray itself as trying to be progressive,” Woody said, “but this is the same league that has the ‘Rooney Rule’ that forces front offices and owners to interview minorities for head coaching jobs, so there is a lot of work to be done in the NFL.’’
Woody, who said during his playing career players “had suspicions about guys’’ they thought were gay, believes the league is ready for its first openly gay player.
“I think for the most part [Sam] will be received well, but to some guys it’s still kind of taboo with football; some guys aren’t going to have the maturity level to handle something like this,’’ he said. “I’m sure he’ll go through some issues during the process. There are going to be things that happen that are going to test him.
“It’s going to take a team with a strong ownership, front office and a strong head coach that will pull the trigger on it and bring [Sam] in. It’s going to take a team with strong infrastructure to be able to handle a situation like this.’’
Woody said he “applauds’’ Sam for his “bravery.”
“For him to do this going into this part of his career, with the NFL Combine coming up, workouts, interviews, takes a lot of courage,’’ he said. “The spotlight is clearly on the NFL now to see how its teams handle this.’’
Woody said he believes there are gay NFL players who will monitor the Sam situation.
“I don’t think it will open the floodgates, but guys will take a wait-and-see approach,’’ he said. “Michael Sam is a test subject and they’re going to wait and see how he handles it, how the organization he goes to handles it. If it’s positive, that could lead to more [players coming out].’’