At one point late last summer, Montreal Alouettes legendary general manager Jim Popp was nearing in on signing two of the more well-known, and polarizing, football players on the planet. Popp was in active negotiations with both Tim Tebow and Michael Sam, and while his pursuit of Tebow was tabled, perhaps for good, after he signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, Popp's persistence with Sam paid off earlier this week when the former standout SEC pass rusher agreed to sign with Montreal.
Sam, the first openly gay player to enter the NFL Draft, has yet to ever step foot in Canada, but he is a pass rusher that Popp has been tracking since Sam's final season at Missouri. Popp, who has a distinguished record of player evaluation, was hoping Sam would fall through the cracks in the NFL for one reason or another.
He sees Sam as being a potential impact player in the pass-happy, speedy Canadian game and plans to cater to his best traits -- should Sam make the team, which isn't a foregone conclusion considering how little football he has played since his senior season of 2013. The announcement of Sam's signing Friday ended a long saga -- the contract was actually signed almost immediately after Sam fulfilled his responsibilities to Dancing With The Stars -- and could be the latest gamble to make good for a man who has a long history of sending players and coaches on to the NFL.
"The truth is, this was a very pleasant experience all the way through, even though it was long and drawn out," Popp told me shortly after Sam's signed contract was announced Friday afternoon. "But that's the CFL. It's not like it's an NFL team and guys jump on board right away. Michael has never been to Canada, and not any guy takes that leap of faith for a game that's not viewed by everybody. The people who bash it don't know anything about it, but it's a tremendous league, and you can ask any of the NFL coaches who have come from here and they'll tell you what an outstanding league it is. We have a tremendous talent level; you can ask Chad Johnson (who played for Popp in Montreal last season). He was shocked."
Popp says Sam will have to adjust to life -- both on and off the field - north of the border.
"So it is a leap of faith anytime someone makes that jump. You don't know the country, you've never been there and you don't know what's going on and what you're going to experience, and for Michael everywhere he goes he has cameras following him around him," Popp said. "He'll be welcomed warmly here by a huge entourage of media. Montreal is a major North American media market in both English and French media and this is a very important game to the Canadian culture and he's going to find out really quick how important it is and he'll realize the caliber of football, too. It is great football."
For Sam to revitalize his career, he needs to be playing, simply put. Popp has been in close contact with Sam's agents since St. Louis drafted Sam in the final round of the 2014 draft, keeping his distance at times, but, after Sam was released by the Rams, maintaining more close contact on the phone. Sam spent some limited time on the Cowboys' practice squad -- he is a native of Texas and is spending the weekend home there before reporting to Montreal on Monday -- but was released by the team in October and has not been involved in any football activity since.
Popp made a push to bring Sam in during last season -- at the same time he was wooing Tebow, which included a private meeting with the quarterback and his agent last summer in Charlotte. While the allure of big TV money beckoned Tebow to be a analyst with ESPN, Sam strongly considered joining Montreal sooner but ended up going to ABC for a season of Dancing With The Stars instead, which Popp says he fully supported.
"This has been a very open, very informative process with his agent the entire time," Popp said. "They were letting us know what's going on each step of the way all the way to actually getting this signed, and he has never wavered one bit. He has always showed interest in playing for us the whole time and it was never, 'I'm too big for that,' or 'I won't go there.' He just wants a chance to play and he's surely talented enough to play, and he warranted this signing. He's a good football player and he'll be a great guy to have in our locker room.
"Each time he was let go by team, then our talks picked back up to the point we got to in the fall, when he was out of a job and according to his agent he was really considering coming to us. I'm sure he still had NFL teams saying they may bring him back and that didn't happen and we got to the winter and he wanted to go to the NFL veteran's combine, which he understood, and then we he got casted for Dancing With The Stars he had contractual obligations in that regard to fulfill.
"But the talks were always continuing through all of that and his agent always kept us abreast of every move and he even asked our opinion of doing Dancing With The Stars, and I was 100 percent supportive. That's a tremendous opportunity for anyone and they kept us updated through that and as soon as show ended last week we had a contract signed within hours."
Popp said he is not overly concerned with how much time Sam has missed and said in his league it's routine to be signing former NFL players who may have been cut during last year's training camp or early in the season.
"The fact of the matter is, no one is really in football shape right now," Popp said, adding that if nothing else doing the dancing show was great cardio for Sam. He's eager to see Sam in pads, as he hasn't had an opportunity to work him out, and believes Sam will quickly feel at ease in a cosmopolitan city and a franchise that has been the standard in the CFL for quite some time as an annual Grey Cup contender.
The fact that Sam has been a tweener in the eyes of NFL scouts -- not quite big enough to play with his hand down and not fast enough to be simply a speed rusher -- is not something the Alouettes are overly concerned with. Popp expects the coaching staff to meld a role for Sam (6-foot-2, 260 pounds) that fits his abilities. They won't try to get him to drop back in coverage or make him more stout against the run at the point of attack -- at least not right away. It's going to be all about getting to the quarterback.
"He'll be able to stand up off the edge and bring pass rush, every play," Popp said. "That's what we'll do with him. He'll get to do what he does best and we'll put him in the position to do that and let him get after the quarterback every down. He still has to make our team; he has to do that and has to prove it on the field. But he has the skill set to do that."
Popp said being in the CFL forces teams not to get too caught up in the metrics and measurables, but focus instead on what a guy does in uniform. He's been impressed with what Sam could do in the CFL since Sam's final years at Missouri and says he wouldn't be shocked if Sam's time in the CFL ends up propelling the pass rusher back to the NFL.
Sam signed a one-year deal with a team option for the 2016 season (Montreal has a window to decide whether to execute that option and in the past Popp has made a practice not to hold back players who are drawing NFL interest). Popp mentioned Clay Mathews as another player who lacked the metrics in college early on and ended up on Montreal's import player list (which Sam was signed from). Of course, Matthews, a former walk-on at USC, ended up having a monster senior season and was drafted by Green Bay in the first round and went on to be a perennial Pro Bowler.
No one would imagine comparing the two now, and Sam's lack of elite moves and elite speed or power could end up keeping him from ever playing in an NFL game. But Popp knows talent. Joe Horn couldn't crack the roster of one of his CFL teams back in Baltimore, for instance, and his former coach, Marc Trestman, left to become an NFL head coach. Popp has built a model franchise in Montreal that sent yet another player, Duron Carter, to the NFL after the 2014 season, and he's plenty intrigued by what Sam can provide if a role is carved out that plays to his strengths.
Perhaps, Popp knows best. He obtained Sam's CFL rights for a reason long ago, and if nothing else, maybe Sam can shine at that level. Popp is worried about any media crush and he's eager to have Sam as a part of his organization. Sam will report on Monday like the rest of the CFL rookies, begin some seminars, take his physical and meet the media on Tuesday and then head off to training camp.
"I had another great visit with him on the phone late last night," Popp said, "and he'll fly here Monday and he's very excited to get started. He just wants to be one of the guys and get back in a football uniform and play football again. That's all he wants."