The character played by Daniel Petronijevic on ‘Playmakers’ was originally slated to be a devout Christian. He turned into a closeted athlete who struggles with his sexual orientation.

It’s a bold plan by a network built on the loyalty of meat-and-potato sports fans: Create an original program that spends portions of at least three episodes exploring the painful struggle a closeted professional athlete undergoes.

But the Entertainment & Sports Programming Network (better known as ESPN) did just that with its 11-episode run of “Playmakers,” which debuted Aug. 26 and wraps up its first season this month. The hour-long drama focuses on a fictitious professional football team called the Cougars. The show pulls no punches.

Storylines include a playboy quarterback, a veteran running back arrested for domestic violence and a player who steals morphine pills from a bedridden young fan.

And then there’s Thad Guerwitcz, a top player on the team who’s struggling to keep a difficult secret — he’s gay.

The National Football League hates the show. Team owners dissed it in the press. Players say it capitalizes on stereotypes.

But fans love it. More than 2.2 million people watch it every week, well above the 1.34 million viewers who tune in for the network’s punchy and popular “SportsCenter.”

“We are trying to entertain and the story is more about how men think in an environment where the stakes are high and the pressure is enormous,” says Ron Semiao, senior vice president of ESPN Original Entertainment. “One of the biggest challenges is taking story lines and characters that engage the viewer to bring them back each week.”

In the gay subplot, “Playmakers” and ESPN strike gold. It’s a cross between the “ripped from the headlines” approach of NBC’s successful “Law & Order” franchise and the frankness of Showtime’s “Queer as Folk.” In the end, viewers see the agonizing choices Guerwitcz faces. The resolution isn’t pretty.

“I didn’t know if I would be able to do the job properly,” says Daniel Petronijevic, the 22-year-old straight actor who plays Guerwitcz on the show. “I didn’t know if I could depict the person authentically. I am happy I managed to squeak by and pull it off.”

Petronijevic’s character secretly dates another man, but it’s an often troubled pairing forced to take a seat on the roller coaster ride of his double-life. Guerwitcz struggles with the relationship, fearful that loving another man will bring to an end the thing that he loves even more: playing professional football.

“Playmakers” even peeks into the bedroom, showing both men in various stages of undress in post-sex scenes that are more risqué than NBC’s “Will & Grace,” but not as graphic as “Queer as Folk.”

The show takes care to accurately depict the intense struggle encountered by gay athletes trapped in a hyper-masculine world, afraid to make a move. When he walks across the locker room to the showers after being outed, Petronijevic captures his pain. As he showers alone, you feel the crushing solitude he experiences.

“It is heavy duty stuff. It is a script anyone would want to get a hold of as an actor,” Petronijevic says. “It was an awesome, awesome experience.”

It’s unclear if the show — and its estimated price tag of $1 million per episode — will return for a second season, though it will continue in repeats after the 11-episode run concludes.

But with its mix of real-life drama, flair and beefcake (Petronijevic bares his bottom, and others often go shirtless), it’s bound to be a hit among gay male sports fans.

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