The National Football League will hold its annual draft this week. Including compensatory picks added at the end of the seventh round, 256 players will be chosen by the league’s 32 teams. For a few dozen, getting drafted is as close to a guarantee as there is in sports. Players will go a little before or a little after they are projected to by the army of pundits who speculate each year about the league’s annual meat market, but for that group, it isn’t a matter of whether they will get drafted, but when they will get chosen.

After those players, there are several hundred more hoping to get selected, and in the days immediately after the draft, hundreds more will get signed by teams around the league as free agents. Last year, as many as 15 SMU Mustangs appeared on NFL rosters in a given week; some got there as free agents, while others were drafted, including defensive end Margus Hunt, who was chosen in the second round a year ago by the Cincinnati Bengals.

Ben Gottschalk is hoping to join former SMU offensive linemen Kelvin Beachum, Jr., and Josh LeRibeus in the NFL (photo by SMU athletics).

Who will make it to the NFL from the Hilltop this season remains to be seen. Many experts have suggested that quarterback Garrett Gilbert and cornerback (or wide receiver?) Kenneth Acker are the most likely to get drafted. But will the other 2013 SMU seniors get a chance to continue their playing careers? What about receivers Jeremy Johnson or Keenan Holman? Safety Jay Scott?

One Mustang who has been drawing attention from NFL teams is offensive lineman Ben Gottschalk. He has had regular contact with “maybe 12-15” teams, and his agent, former NFL fullback Tony Paige, has had conversations about him with every team in the league. He worked out in Dallas in front of scouts from the New England Patriots and St. Louis Rams.

But the biggest interest so far has been shown by the Kansas City Chiefs, who, in early April, flew Gottschalk to their team headquarters, where he got a tour of the team’s facilities and took a physical before sitting down with head coach Andy Reid.

“He was really cool, really down-to-earth,” Gottschalk said of Reid. “He was just getting to know me as a person.

“I didn’t know what to expect. Honestly, I thought maybe it would be a little more intimidating, because — I don’t know — he looks a little meaner on TV than he is in person. It’s the NFL, and the head coach is the top dog. You know, (New England head coach) Bill Belichick has the reputation of being just stone-cold, but Coach Reid wasn’t intimidating. He was very down-to-earth, kind of a regular guy. He’s a guy I could definitely see myself playing for. If that’s not the case, it’s not the case, but he was great.”

Whichever team ends up with Gottschalk has options as far as how to use him. Recruited to SMU as a tackle, he ended up playing both tackle positions and both guard positions, as well as blocking on special teams. After the season, he decided to add one more skill to his résumé, teaching himself to snap a ball so a team could play him at center, if needed.

“Pretty much all of the feedback I have been getting back from every team is that they want to see me inside, whether it’s at left guard or right guard,” Gottschalk said. I guess I don’t have the height or the arm length for tackle at the NFL level, and I’m OK with that. I enjoy playing inside.”

If Gottschalk has convinced NFL scouts that he can play more than one position, his value to a team would go up. Most teams carry only seven offensive linemen on their active roster each week, so Gottschalk is banking on the theory that if a player has the versatility to fill multiple roles, his stock goes up.

“Teams don’t carry a lot of linemen,” Gottschalk said. “I’m getting bigger (Gottschalk said he now weighs 305 pounds, after playing last season at around 290), and they’re looking at me as an all-around offensive lineman. The more positions you can play, the more valuable you are. I figure I can play tackle and guard on both sides, so I figured I should be able to play center, as well. Not going to hurt me.

“Look at ‘Beach’ (former SMU lineman and current Pittsburgh Steeler Kelvin Beachum, Jr.). He did the same thing. He was a tackle at SMU who relied more on his quickness because of his size, but he played great and got drafted, and then taught himself to play center … and they have played him there. I think he has played all five (offensive line) positions already.”

Gottschalk said he has mixed emotions about the week ahead. On one hand, he is excited to find out if and where he will end up. On the other, he said he plans to not watch the draft, because he expects he will get angry when he sees players who might not be as good as he is getting picked ahead of him, or instead of him.

“I’m going to try to make it a normal day,” he said. “If I get a call saying ‘this is so-and-so from whatever team,’ of course I’ll be excited. But I know there’s a chance I won’t get drafted.

“I have a final (exam) Friday and another one Tuesday, so that will take up a lot of my time and energy. I might watch Netflix or stop by my mom’s place (in Dallas) and take the dogs out. In a way, everybody else around me is a lot more excited. They’re making it such a big deal, saying ‘I can’t believe you have the option of going and playing in the NFL.’ To me, it’s just the next step. I want to move on and build off what I’ve been building for the last four years.”

In the NFL, regardless of the team with which he ends up, and regardless of which position he plays, Gottschalk faces a period of transition, but not one he thinks he can’t handle. He will have to learn a new offense, new blocking schemes, and he will be operating largely out of a three-point stance (with one hand on the ground), compared to the two-point stance used by the linemen at SMU.

“There’s rookie mini-camps, there’s OTAs (Organized Team Activities), things like that, and I’ll have access to a playbook for what I hope is the whole summer,” he said. “Whatever happens, I feel like I have all the tools necessary to handle it.

“It’s going to be a much different transition than it was when I went from high school to college, obviously. I don’t think the plays are going to be that much more difficult to understand — it’s just that there are so many more plays to learn, and the playbook will change from week to week. In high school, literally all we did was play man-to-man, and then help out the center. The offense at SMU is much more complicated to learn, and that why it usually takes most guys two or three years to get it. It took me at least two years to fully understand the offense and the blocking schemes. There’s a lot to learn, but that will really pay off. Playing here prepared Beach to get to the NFL, and it got Josh (LeRibeus) there.”

Growing up in Los Angeles, Gottschalk didn’t have a hometown team that became a dream destination in the NFL. The Rams and Raiders both left town, to St. Louis and Oakland, respectively when Gottschalk, now 22, was just three years old. He was a college fan, mostly watching USC.

“I don’t know,” Gottschalk said when asked if he expects to get drafted or to sign as a free agent. “I really don’t. I know there’s one team, Kansas City, that is interested enough that they flew me up to meet the coach, so that’s obviously very encouraging. That doesn’t mean they’ll draft me, but they might. The worst-case scenario is that I sign as a free agent, but there are at least three teams — the Denver Broncos, the St. Louis Rams and Indianapolis — that I know are interested in signing me as a ‘priority free agent.’ Maybe other teams have interest. Look at Margus: the Bengals worked him out on Pro Day last year, but he never talked to them at all during the pre-draft process. So you really don't know who might be interested.

“But you never know what’s going to happen. There’s always guys who you think are going to be free agents who end up getting drafted, and guys who are supposed to get drafted who don’t. In a way, I really want to get it over with — the politics, the scouting. I just want to get to work, show them what I’m made of.”