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- Mar 19, 2019
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INDIANAPOLIS — When the name “E.J. Speed” hit the ticker during the fifth round of the 2019 NFL Draft, non-NFL personnel across the country questioned, in unison, “Who?”
The linebacker’s name didn’t really hit the map until a jaw-dropping pre-draft workout in March, but once it happened the Colts and the rest of the league went to work.
Colts southwest area scout Byron Lusby was tasked with vetting the Tarleton State product, and quite a bit came up in the process. Speed isn’t just some random small-school prospect. There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to this player.
Speed wasn’t always overlooked. Coming out of high school as an athletic quarterback, he was recruited by bigger FBS schools like Oklahoma State, Colorado and Colorado State. However, Speed had something keeping him close to home.
“Yes, there were opportunities, but my brother who was adopted, named Paul Snead, he was adopted, coming out of little league football for us and he got diagnosed with cancer in December of my senior year in high school,” Speed explained. “So I decided to stay close to him with the chances that he would get over cancer and come and play with me at a closer school, about 45 minutes away from my house.
“He ended up passing away in April, so that didn’t work out,” Speed continued. “But in all, I was excited because I thought Tarleton was a great school with a great coaching staff, athletic directors and the family I talked to was just amazing. So it worked out.”
When Speed arrived as a true freshman at Tarleton in 2013, he converted to wide receiver and redshirted. He then received a medical redshirt the following season and converted to defensive end. He finally hit the field for the Texans in 2015 and eventually found his way at linebacker.
Through four years of gameplay, Speed garnered Second-Team All-Lone Star Conference honors twice including 2016 when he led all FCS players with five forced fumbles.
But Speed also had an off-the-field incident that merited serious vetting by the Colts; eventually the most serious of the charges against him were dropped, however.
Speed has vowed to leave those unfortunate events in the past.
“I mean, selling myself to teams was based on the football field, but the legal issue was just something that me and a lot of guys learned from and just distancing myself from guys that aren’t going in the same direction as me,” Speed said.
General manager Chris Ballard and the Colts are willing to take chances on players who may have slipped up before as long as they aren’t truly bad apples.
“We do our work. Look, if the character thing – I can’t emphasize it enough. Kids make mistakes. They make mistakes,” Ballard said about Speed. “That doesn’t mean that they’re bad kids. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad people. Kids make mistakes. He made a mistake. The people he was hanging around – we did our work.”
As a player, it’s easy to see Speed has potential but is a little raw as a prospect. After all, he is still young to the linebacker position (and defense in general), so he’s an ascending player.