The Washington Football Team has signed Sammis Reyes, a former Tulane basketball player attempting to make it as an NFL tight end after putting up some staggering numbers at Florida's pro day earlier this month.
Reyes stands at 6-foot-7, 240 pounds and grew up in Chile before moving to the U.S. at 14 with the dream of playing in the NBA. While the football coaches at his Florida high school begged him to play both sports, Reyes ultimately stuck to basketball, fearing a football injury might jeopardize his long-term basketball plans.
But Reyes never really amounted to much in college basketball, averaging only 3.5 minutes per game in his final season at Tulane (2017-18).
"I wanted to go to the NBA; that was my dream my entire childhood, and of course it never happened," Reyes told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in January. "So when I was 23, my current agent, my family and my close friends, they were like, 'You’ve got to give this football thing a shot. You're fast, you're strong, you're powerful.'
"So my friends, my best friends, and everybody around me convinced me to give it a shot."
Reyes flashed some eye-popping athletic ability at Florida's pro day, turning heads with his 40-inch vertical jump and 4.64 40-yard dash.
Now Reyes hopes to become the next in a long line of former college basketball players to successfully convert to the NFL, joining the likes of Tony Gonzalez, Antonio Gates and Jimmy Graham. Of those three, only Gates exclusively played basketball in college. The others majored in both sports. Graham played basketball for the Miami Hurricanes for four years, then played tight end for the football team for a season after graduating.
Mo Alie-Cox is a more recent success story, though he was a long-term project for the Indianapolis. After four years of college basketball at VCU, Alie-Cox signed with the Colts in April 2017, then kicked around the practice squad for awhile before finally making his NFL debut in Sept. 2018. While he did appear in 25 games between 2018 and 2019, it wasn't until Alie-Cox's third NFL season when he finally broke out, catching 31 passes for 394 yards and two touchdowns for the Colts in 2020.
Reyes was one of 11 international athletes — from nine countries — selected for a spot in the NFL's International Player Pathway Program in 2021. The program intends to provide elite international athletes "the opportunity to compete at the NFL level, improve their skills, and ultimately earn a spot on an NFL roster."
According to the Washington Football Team, players chosen from the program are allocated to teams in one division chosen at random, and if a player doesn't make the 53-man roster at the conclusion of training camp, his assigned team receives a practice squad exemption to keep him throughout the season.
"However, Reyes was so impressive during his Pro Day that Washington's scouts decided snag him before the program even concluded," the Washington Football Team says.
Needless to say, if Washington could unearth a hidden gem at the tight end position, it would save them a position to address in the draft. Reyes would also be their second big find at the position in as many offseasons.
