INDIANAPOLIS — Brett Toth started at offensive tackle for Army the last two seasons. He was a central figure in a relentless running game that pushed the Knights to 18 wins during that span, the best run in their modern history. He’s good enough to play in the NFL. The challenge is convincing a team to draft someone who probably can’t play until 2020.
The military might keep Brett Toth out of the NFL until 2020. He’s OK with that.
A Trump administration policy is likely to delay Toth’s football career.
Glenn Andrews-USA TODAY Sports
When a cadet enrolls at West Point, he commits to serving 24 months of active duty almost immediately upon graduating. The same applies at Navy and Air Force, and for most of the academies’ history, grads heading into professional sports careers were the exception, not the rule. After a brief change, that’s the status quo again.
When Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds set college football ablaze in 2015, the Obama administration’s Defense Department made a policy to let service academy athletes request to serve their 24 months in the reserves, during which time they could play professional sports. Reynolds got approval, and the Ravens took him in the 2016 draft.
In May 2017, the Trump administration wiped out that policy, arguing that taxpayers fund educations for service members, not athletes. So, players at the academies again need waivers to join the NFL within two years of leaving campus. The department said in 2017 it wouldn’t provide them. It didn’t waive the 24-month requirement for Air Force receiver Jalen Robinette in 2017. The previously projected mid-round pick went undrafted.
Toth insists he won’t ask for a waiver to let him play.
He’s heard “speculation that there’s talk about it,” but he won’t pursue it himself.
“If the Army and military believes I deserve it, they would provide it to me,” Toth tells SB Nation. “It’s not my position to lobby for something like that, because I went to West Point fully committed to doing the service time, and I believe I should stick to that commitment.”
Toth plans to report to Fort Hood, Texas, after his graduation from West Point May 25. That location’s subject to change, but the plan is that he’ll be a 12A, an engineer officer.
His graduation is subject to him meeting all of West Point’s requirements. He measured 6’6 and 305 pounds at the NFL Combine, and he says he’s in compliance with Army rules for a body composition tape test. He plans to shed some weight to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test, in which he wants run two miles in less than 15 minutes.
“You don’t see linemen doing that often,” he says.
Toth could still have an NFL career, whether he’s drafted or not.
If Toth doesn’t get picked, he’ll be free to sign wherever. That probably wouldn’t happen until he’s cleared to play. If he does get picked and doesn’t get a waiver from the Defense Department, he’ll go on a team’s reserve list. He won’t count against the active roster or collect a paycheck, but that team will hold his rights until he’s available to play.
The natural parallel is Steelers left tackle Alejandro Villanueva, an Army grad who went undrafted in 2010, did his military service, and didn’t catch on permanently in the league until 2014. Toth, though, has been going through the draft process in standard fashion. He played in the East-West Shrine Bowl and the Senior Bowl, and he had standard meetings with NFL teams at the combine.
“All the organizations, they’re proud of kind of the decision I made as well,” he says. “Again, it starts affecting the business side of it. Now teams are thinking, ‘We use a draft pick on someone we’re not getting right away.’ Again, it all goes into a team’s decision to take a guy and whether they truly believe in where his commitment’s at. Other than that, we talk about the usual stuff — just scheme, football, and kind of my story as well.”
Toth will have to leave behind Army’s flexbone option, which doesn’t exist in the NFL. That throwback scheme could work “here and there,” he says, by surprising pro defenses.
“I think it would definitely throw a wrench into the entire process.”
He’ll finish his draft process with no regrets.
Toth knew the deal when he went to West Point. He was a two-star recruit in the class of 2014, out of Charleston, S.C. He didn’t want to play at a military school at first, but an in-home visit with then-Army assistant Tony Coaxum — now Central Michigan’s special teams coach — got Toth to reconsider. He hasn’t looked back.
“It’s a unique experience, and they tell you up front the adversity you’re gonna face and the obstacles,” Toth says. “I’ve always been the kind of guy that knows if you take those obstacles head on and you overcome them, you’re better in the end. I knew it was gonna position me to be the man I wanted to be.”
See More:
