Logan Alum Carves Path to NFL

It’s almost unfathomable that DeJon "D.J." Gomes hardly got a sniff from colleges out of high school. The 2007 graduate is getting the last laugh.

A star on the football team with over 1,200 rushing yards and a physical safety on defense his senior year at Logan, Gomes was not only drafted by the Washington Redskins in the fifth round of April’s NFL draft, but he also made the 53-man roster a few months later. The rookie is a 5-foot-11, 200-pound backup safety.  

It has been quite a turbulent ride the past five months for .

Before the draft, the NFL was in the middle of a lockout. The lockout was lifted temporarily during the draft, but then reinstated shortly after. The lockout was permanently lifted at the end of July when a new collective bargaining agreement was reached, which allowed Gomes and the rest of the NFL hopefuls to get to work.

“When I got drafted it was real exciting,” Gomes said. “But at the same time, I knew there was a lockout going on. There wasn’t much I could do besides work on my own.”

That type of adversity was nothing new for Gomes.

Without colleges banging down his door offering scholarships, Gomes went to one of the top junior college football programs in the country, City College of San Francisco. He quickly made a name for himself as one of the top secondary players in the state. His sophomore year at CCSF, Gomes had four interceptions, 39 tackles and 14 pass breakups.

It was then he attracted the likes of Division I programs. He eventually chose Nebraska.

At Nebraska, Gomes took his game to the next level. He was a big reason for Nebraska’s defensive successes and became an all-Big 12 honorable mention selection.

“I was determined to make it to where I am today,” Gomes said. “First, just having to deal with that adversity my senior year helped me with perseverance. I had a new coaching staff (at Logan) my senior year, had to go the JC route and got looked past by a lot of college teams.”

Gomes’ senior year at Logan included a new coaching staff led by George Zuber. A defensive coordinator at San Leandro prior to taking over at Logan, Zuber coached some highly-touted defensive teams. One of those squads was led by current Philadelphia Eagles strong safety Jarred Page, a sixth-year NFL player.

“I saw it in him,” Zuber said of Gomes’ skills on defense. “He’s a hybrid guy and that’s hard to find. He’s got the hybrid body. He had some walk-on offers, but no major schools were on him (out of high school). We talked about it with his family and they decided to go the JC route.”

One thing that helped Gomes along the way was his academic status. He was an academic-qualifier for college out of Logan. That meant, when he decided on Nebraska, he left CCSF after the fall semester and enrolled at Nebraska for the spring semester.

He was able to get reps in at Nebraska during the spring, which gave him a head start.

“(Nebraska) prepared me a lot,” Gomes said. “I played with guys that are really good and that makes you pick up your game even more.”

One player in particular that Gomes bonded with was running back Roy Helu Jr. A graduate, Helu Jr. was on the same academic and athletic path as Gomes. They were both drafted – and by the same team.

“That definitely helped,” Gomes said. “He was my roommate in camp. We’d have little conversations with each other on what we needed to improve on." 

"I’ve had to come in and prove myself since the first day of training camp,” he said.