Journal
A Great Day At The Combine
2/27/06
I arrived in Indianapolis on Friday afternoon around 3:30 PM and spent most of the day in meetings. I had some formal discussions with some coaches but basically just got an introduction to what the combine was all about. They told us to be ready early in the morning.
The wake up call at 6:00 AM had me downstairs for an early breakfast. I had to go straight to testing at the hospital after eating. The main point there was to see if anything was wrong with me. I had to take x-rays, MRI’s, spectra vision tests and go to a whole bunch of stations. I’m healed from everything so they found nothing wrong with me. They were however especially checking out my wrist, my thumb and a knee where I had a slight MCL sprain. But that was actually real quick and easy because I was fine. Later on they had me test my strength on the bench press. They had us bench 225 pounds as many times as possible. I did real good especially with my long arms I was able to press the weight 30 times and I think that was in the top four or five in our group. From there I had a good dinner around 6:00 PM and got prepared for info meetings that evening.
The info meetings went from 7:30 – 11:00 PM and it was basically meeting with scouts and answering general questions. It wasn’t too difficult. I met with five different teams that night.
On Sunday morning I had to be up by 7:00 AM. After grabbing some breakfast I attended the NFL Players Association introduction meeting. The whole afternoon was spent doing the psychological testing. They weren’t really hard at all. They just wanted to see what your state of mind was, how you thought in certain situations and your leadership ability. They really wanted to see what type of a person you are. The Giants had a long test with over 300 questions. I was ready for dinner after a long day and finished up the evening by meeting with more coaches.
Today we did the physical testing. I had to run the 40, do the broad jump, vertical test and cone drills. I participated in all the drills. Some guys out there with bad hamstrings or other injuries usually stayed away from running the 40. I however ran some good 40 times and I credit some of that from my training at Athletes Performance. The specialized training I went through at Athletes Performance really prepared me well for the combine. Before I knew it I had finished up a great day at the combine and was heading to the airport at 3:30 PM this afternoon.
Now that I have some time to really think about it, I wanted to finish out as one of the top defensive ends in the combine. I believe I did that. I really wanted to make some noise so I’m glad I did well there. Everyone seemed to understand that this was an interview. This is our job so we took these interviews very serious and I for one worked really hard to be prepared for the combine. One of the interesting things that you can take a way from this is the opportunity to meet a lot good players from around the country and the chance to meet several coaches.
With combine just ending, I’m going to head back to Athletes Performance for some more training. I have my pro day on March 10th so I want to be ready for that as well. Once my pro day is over I’ll head back to the Cincinnati area and work out at a great facility there called Sports World where they get guys ready for the next level.