I say:
(1) Draft Michael Sam for outside guy in the 3 - 4
(2) Redskins management -- Bruce Allen and Dan Snyder -- should then insist that Jerry Smith deserves to be voted into the Hall of Fame.
I had the same thought as Redskin Dan v1978 (AKA, my son). (I also thought: it's great to have Doug Williams back with the Redskins). From the article in the Post by Mike Jones:
Redskins personnel executive Doug Williams said that Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam should be commended for the courage he displayed when he announced on Sunday that he is gay – a move that could impact his stock in the NFL draft.
Although the NFL doesn’t have any openly gay players, Williams doesn’t think Sam’s declaration should hurt his chances of being drafted. He also doesn’t believe that Sam will encounter harsh locker room conflict if drafted.
“No. 1, I think we’ve got to take our hats off to the young guy because No. 1, he did something that takes a lot of courage,” Williams said. “I’m sure he thinks it could hurt his draft status. Or it could help it. But at the end of the day, the locker room is what it is. You get a lot of people talking about the locker room, but at the end of the day, if you have not been in a locker room, you would never really understand a locker room. When you look at it, for five years, this young guy has been in a locker room. He’s been in the locker room with his teammates and they put their arms around each other and they went out and played. They had a heck of a season: finished No. 5 in the whole country, which means it wasn’t a big deal to them. They went out and played. At the NFL level, the bottom line is where does he rate as a player with the team that’s going to end up drafting him? That’s the bottom line and how we have to look at it. It was like I told someone earlier, Russell Wilson won the Super Bowl and nobody talked about him being black. I think eventually, we have to get to that point when we talk about people’s sexuality and get to that point where you say, ‘Hey, that’s their preference, but if he’s a good football player, and if he can help us win, he can be on my team.’ ”
That doesn’t mean Sam will completely avoid conflict or scrutiny from potential teammates, however, Williams said.
“I think we all understand that there are going to be some knuckleheads out there now. That ain’t going to ever change,” he said. “But you’ll have enough people that are mature enough to understand that society has changed over the last 10 to 15 years and you have to accept people for what they are or what have you. But you’ll have some knuckleheads who will put stuff out there online and things like that. But at the end of the day, if this guy is strong enough to come out, he’s strong enough to handle a whole lot of stuff.”
Williams, a great human being as well as a fine QB, added that it was not such a big deal for him to be the first black QB to lead a team to victory in the Super Bowl. Every Redskin believed in him and supported him. Looking on from outside the Redskin locker-room, I saw an immense yapping about Williams' race, and loads of arguments that John Elway was a golden-boy super-star while Williams was just "some guy". (A "some guy" who happened to throw four TD passes in one quarter. They would barely finish playing Hail to the Redskins before the Skins scored again and they had to play Our Song again. "Some guy", indeed!)
