RIO DE JANEIRO — Nate Ebner came off the field drenched in sweat, his red, white, and blue uniform clinging to him like Saran Wrap, tank emptied. The scene was familiar. The setting — an Olympic rugby field nearly 5,000 miles from Gillette Stadium — was not.

The Patriots safety/special teamer is not going to join Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame receiver and 1964 Olympic 100-meter champion “Bullet’’ Bob Hayes as the only athlete with a Super Bowl ring and a gold medal. The US rugby sevens team was eliminated from medal contention Wednesday.

But Ebner joins the list of legitimate two-sport professional athletes, a rarity in today’s era of sports hyper-specialization.

Bo and Deion, make some room, boys.

It’s doubtful that Nike is going to come out with a Nate Knows marketing campaign. But Ebner has proven at the 2016 Summer Olympics that rugby is still part of his repertoire.

“People oohed and ahhed about whether Nate Ebner was a rugby player. He has shown here, and in the six months of hard work he has put in that he is a proper rugby player,’’ said USA Rugby coach Mike Friday.

Football was always Ebner’s fallback, rugby his true love. He switched to football his junior year at Ohio State.

At age 17, Ebner was the youngest player to ever play for the US national team sevens.

Becoming a two-sport athlete was a return to Ebner’s roots.

“Nate is a rugby guy. He played it growing up. He’s not your stereotypical NFL player who wants to try out a new game,’’ said teammate Danny Barrett who played college rugby against Ebner. “He was a guy that wanted to come home and play what he knows. Knocking a bit of rust off is definitely tough. Getting fit is definitely tough, but he fit in seamlessly.’’

Well, minus a few Deflategate jokes Barrett said were told at Ebner’s expense.

Unfortunately, Ebner’s Olympic experience is ending almost as fast as the don’t-blink rugby sevens games, which consist of two seven-minute halves.

Despite a late try from Ebner, the US team failed to make it out of group play with a 24-19 loss to powerhouse Fiji in their first of two matches on Wednesday. They’ll play for ninth place against Spain on Thursday at Deodoro Stadium.

Ebner wants the US team to heed the mantra of the man who introduced him to rugby, his late father Jeff, who was murdered in 2008 at the family auto reclamation business in Springfield, Ohio.

“Finish Strong.’’

“We’re going to finish this out strong,’’ said Ebner. “That’s all we can do, but the experience has been great. It’s been awesome. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I wish we would have had a better day [Tuesday] to put ourselves in a better position, but it is what it is. Ultimately, we gave everything we had to this. Yeah, no regrets at all.’’

The only regret Ebner would have had is if he had not taken an NFL sabbatical to try to play in rugby’s reintroduction to the Olympics for the first time since 1924.

“Obviously, it’s a tough decision to make,’’ said Ebner. “But at the end of the day, you see a sport in the Olympics that you grew up playing your whole life. How do you not want to be a part of that? It was kind of eating me up a little bit. I just didn’t want to live with the regret of not trying or thinking what would that experience have been like if I could have made that team.

“Once I had the conviction that I wanted to do this I put everything into it. There is risk involved. I have a career in football and whatnot. But those weren’t good enough reasons for me to not try a once-in-a-lifetime dream.’’

Ebner has been on the big stage before. He was US MVP at the Under-19 and the Under-20 International Rugby Board (now World Rugby) World Championships in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

He showed why the last few days. After being on the bench for the team’s haunting opening loss to Argentina on Tuesday, Ebner scored a try in the US’s win over Brazil later that day. He also leveled Gustavo Albuquerque with a tackle that would have made Rodney Harrison proud.

“It has been awesome to see him come back as a rugby player,’’ said US captain Madison Hughes, whose mother is from Leominster, Mass. “I think he showed you he is a world-class player, and having an extra world-class player never hurts. I think he would be an incredible asset for our team. Obviously, he has got a big career going on that means a lot. We wish the best for him.’’

Ebner’s love for rugby is clear. Even though his nickname at Ohio State was “Leonidas’’ after the legendary laconic Greek warrior and he has been Patriot programmed to say little, Ebner has embraced his role as a spokesperson and ambassador for the game in the United States.

He has repeatedly answered the same questions about the NFL and the high-profile support he has gotten from the Patriots.

One of the precepts of the Patriot Way is that football must be important to you. Perhaps, Patriots coach Bill Belichick signed off on this Olympic excursion though because of the similarities between Ebner and his father and their relationship to rugby and Belichick’s relationship with his late father Steve and football.

The No. 12 Ebner donned for the US was the same number his father wore when he played rugby at the University of Minnesota.

Ebner said once he explained his convictions to Belichick and the others in the organization, they were on board. That support has meant the world to him.

“I think ultimately they understood what they were getting when they drafted me back in 2012 as a rugby player with a rugby background,’’ said Ebner.

Ebner isn’t quite the modern answer to Gene Conley, a three-time All-Star pitcher in the major leagues who played on three championship Celtics teams as center/forward (1959, 1960 and 1961).

But he’ll return to Foxborough with dual-sport citizenship.

Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.