Since Michael Sam came out as gay this spring, there has been a lot of speculation about where the All-American, first-team All-SEC defensive end would be drafted. That would be a good enough reason in my book to do a breakdown. But I also referenced Sam previously in my look at his teammate, Kony Ealy, and I wanted to clarify what I meant when I said Sam had the better technique of the two.
For the purposes of this breakdown I watched Sam play against Vanderbilt, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and Oklahoma State. Those games represented the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and 14th games of his final season, respectively. DraftBreakdown.com has the video cutups.
I will stipulate that the spacing of these games was not ideal for me. Most of these games fell in the middle of the season, when Sam went on his hot streak and racked up most of his sacks. On the other hand, I would say the fact that he was so good in the meaty part of Missouri's SEC East schedule means that we watched him play on some pretty big stages with some pretty high stakes.
