In what many are flagging as a strange ruling, the NFL announced that former Ohio State standout Terrelle Pryor will be eligible for Monday’s NFL supplemental draft but that the controversial player must sit out the first five games after he signs a contract.

Pryor chose not to play his final season with the Buckeyes or else suffer a five-game suspension for his role in a memorabilia-for-cash scandal. Now, it seems that the NFL is enforcing the NCAA’s sentence.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said you can’t dance around the rules “and get a free pass into the NFL.”

Practices and the first five games are crucial for any young quarterback to learn a system, so this could really kill any chance that Pryor had of being drafted next week. But people might have shied away from him, anyway, with his time away from the game and the uncertainty of whether he’d be eligible at all.

Still, for desperate teams in need of a promising quarterback, Pryor should be rather cheap now. He might even be worth a gamble.

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