Here's Bryan Randall's report from the NFL Combine, where he spent four days being poked, prodded, and tested.

Bonus Feature

TSL Audio Clip Randall tells us what he thinks his strengths and weaknesses are. Format: MP3 Time: 1:03 Size: 250 kb

I got to Indianapolis around 10:30 Thursday morning. There were a lot of other guys on my flight. Mike Williams from USC, David Greene from Georgia, Cedric Houston from Tennessee, the quarterback from Florida A&M, Dougherty. When we first got there, we got checked in the rooms and everything and got our gear. As soon as you got there, you put your stuff down and went to the hospital and started all these X-ray tests, physicals, check ups on any old injuries that you might have had over the course of your college career, or anytime that you may have had surgery. You’re at the hospital for about four hours.

After we left the hospital we went to the hotel for this thing called Cybex testing, which I had never done before. Basically it's just a machine that tests your hip flexors, your quads and your hamstrings. That was kind of weird. It was a little bit tougher than I thought it was going to be. It tests the strengths of your hamstrings and your quads and the rotation of your hip flexors. You’re on something almost like a leg curl machine, and you’re trying to do reps as fast as you can with resistance and without resistance. It’ll wear your legs out a little bit. It was my first time doing that. I didn’t know what it was. I had seen Cybex testing on the paper, but I didn’t know what it was. So I wasn’t prepared for it, but its not something that’s so bad that you are going to be totally shocked.

This had been going on all afternoon, and we had dinner about 6 o’clock, then we got our itinerary for what was going on the rest of the week. After dinner there were a couple of groups that went to meet with position coaches. They had this thing across the street where the players could walk in, it was basically just a free for all, to where there were a bunch of position coaches from all the teams in the room. You just stand around, and if a coach wants to talk to you he just comes over and picks you out. They just walk over and grab you if they want you. By that time we had to wear our gear pretty much everywhere to be identified. We had a sweatshirt with our name and number on the back and your position on the front of it. That area right there with all the coaches and stuff was usually position coaches.

There was another setup in the hotel where there were teams that would set up meeting times with you, and they had individual rooms in the hotel. That first night I had two meetings. I had an interview with the Chicago Bears and I had an interview with the Washington Redskins. They ask you a lot about your background, a lot about how your season went, your strengths and weaknesses as a player. For me personally, the quarterbacks coach was asking me some questions about our schemes and different things we did as far as the offense goes, and our protections and a lot of football knowledge about the quarterback position. It's almost like you’re being cross-examined in court or something. The first time I went in there, they videotaped the interview. You just sit in the chair and all the coaches sit around you and ask you questions and do whatever you want. It's like being on the Budweiser Hot Seat, or the Hokie Hot Seat (laughs). That was pretty much the end of the day, curfew was at 11 o’clock.

Friday was almost the same thing as Thursday. We started out in the morning going over and getting physical tests done to you again. On Friday they had about seven rooms set up with different NFL doctors in there from every NFL team. You would go in a room, the doctor would look at the card you had filled out about previous injuries, and they just start examining you. They look at your X-rays, if you had a sprained ankle they would be looking at your ankle and checking out the rotation of your ankle, if your shoulder was hurt they were looking to see if there was any unevenness in your shoulder, checking your flexibility. Basically they were just picking you apart from the previous day.

Every time I saw someone, they said I had a pretty clean history, which I do. I haven’t had any really serious injuries since I’ve been in school. The only thing they had on me was that I was flatfooted, that was about it (laughs). It wasn’t much other than that. We didn’t leave the until probably five o’clock.

We took the Wonderlic Test on Friday. The Wonderlic is a series of questions that tests reasoning, math logic and different things like that. It’s a timed test of 12 minutes and 50 questions. The questions start off easy and they get harder as you go, but it’s really testing your ability to think quick and things like that. It was my second time taking it, I feel I did pretty good, but I think I did better probably the first time. The first time I took it was at the Hula Bowl.

They had the bench press Friday, but I didn’t do that. That’s the thing, I was expecting the running and everything to come up pretty quick, but actually the running and stuff wasn’t until the very last day that we were there. It gets kind of tiring waiting to do all your testing because that’s what you’re looking forward to, that’s what you’ve been working out for.

They did the heights and weigh ins on Friday. We did that before we did any of the stuff with the doctors. You go in there and you line up by position and number, everybody takes off their shirt and their shoes, you get your hand measured, your arm length. All the coaches are there watching from the stands, like they’re there to watch a game or something. You get your height taken and they call it out, you get your weight taken in front of them after that. That was the first thing, and I was kind of nervous about that because at the Hula Bowl I measured in at 5’11”. I measured in at just over 6 feet at the combine, and weighed 225.

Saturday we met with the NFL Players Association that morning, which was interesting. They talked about contracts, and about how fast your money can go when you first get into the league, things like that. Troy Vincent from the Buffalo Bills, he’s the president and he was there to talk to us about that. It wasn’t just about the contracts and stuff like that, it was basically what the NFL Players Association is all about. If you’re fortunate enough to make it into the league, it was about what the Association has done in the past.

On Saturday I met with the Buffalo Bills, and that went pretty good. Any interview you set up with any team, they are very similar. A couple of different questions here and there, but pretty similar.

I saw all of [my teammates] except for Eric. I didn’t see him. I saw Vinnie, talked to Jon Dunn and Jim. It’s weird because you’re interacting with all the top players in the country, the top draft picks and people who are supposed to go lottery on the first day and all that, so you get a chance to see all the players. All the players are there.

I did get a chance to chill with Mike Williams from USC a pretty good amount. He was a real cool dude, real down to earth, you know, real humble. He was just easy going. It’s weird to see people out of uniform after you get to meet them, because you don’t know what to expect a lot of times.

Saturday night we had to turn in at 11 again. I didn’t go do any interviews that night because I was so excited about the next day.

On Sunday we ended up waking up about 8:30. We didn’t go over to the RCA Dome until about 10. When we got over there, there was already another group working out, a group of quarterbacks and wide receivers. So we waited for about an hour and a half or two hours. We were just sitting around waiting to do things, and that got kind of nerve racking, just sitting there for so long.

We went to a back room and did these player profiles. They take a picture of you with your shirt off, with your name and all that. Then we went in and watched after sitting around for about 45 minutes, they finally let us go in there and watch. We sat in there for probably about another hour.

I really wasn’t watching the 40s because I had seen guys run the day before. I was watching the quarterbacks throwing the ball and the drills they were putting them through. I was looking at some of the big name quarterbacks to see how they were doing and to see how everybody was throwing the ball. It’s surprising because a lot of guys you watch on TV, sometimes you make them more than what they are. Just like me and Coach Rogers always talk about, people make guys into super heroes a lot of times, but they put their socks and shoes on just like you do. You watch guys go out there and make throws, and everybody talks about people with the big arm and arm strength and all that. I’m sitting there watching guys throw grounders on outs and out cuts, and throwing lollipops. I’m watching it and it’s like bringing everything into perspective, you know, "I can make those throws." I was gaining confidence just from watching other people.

When it was our turn, we ran the 40 first, and I was really excited about that. My goal was to run somewhere in the 4.5 range even though some of the times have been known to be slow on the RCA Dome turf. On the first one I was real excited, but I didn’t start good. I didn’t start good on either one of my runs and I knew that was going to be the most important part, because once I get to about 20 yards I can stride out pretty good. The start was the big thing for me, and I didn’t come out good on either one of my starts. I ran a 4.68 and 4.72.

I think I was about fifth or sixth fastest among quarterbacks. The thing is, I know I’m faster than a couple of those other quarterbacks that ran faster times than me. I want to say Matt Jones was the fastest and he can run, he can run about a 4.4. But as far as the rest of them, I know I can run about a 4.5 range if I can just get out of my start.

After the 40, we started throwing. We had individual drills as far as throwing the ball and doing drops and things like that. That was the first time we actually got a chance to throw the ball. I did good. I was throwing a good ball and had good velocity on the ball. I was pretty accurate. (laughs) Actually I was laughing with Coach Rogers because Coach Rogers was there, and the first pass I threw I winged it over the guy’s head on my first throw. I guess adrenaline you can call it, but after that I was fine. It was just that first throw, but other than that I was pretty accurate.

After the throwing, we had velocity tests of the ball. Basically that was just a three-step drop, throwing to a five-yard hitch. They measure it with a radar gun. They write your velocity down and don't say anything, so you don’t know. I found out later that I had the third fastest velocity. I think about 21 quarterbacks threw the ball.

After the throwing we got together with the wide receivers. We had worked with them before, but they didn’t really video us for our drills. We just did some drills for them [the receivers], as far as throwing them the ball and some short drills. After that, we got to the drills where we were being filmed on throwing routes. I threw the routes pretty good. We had the receivers run and the quarterbacks took two routes back to back. They were slants, out cuts, digs, and then go routes on the left side. And then from the right side we did curls, post corners, and outs.

I would say I put the ball on the money about 75% or 80%. From our group, I threw the ball as well as anybody did. In my group it was Matt Jones, Jason White, Dan Orlovsky, Gino Guidugili, Josh Haldi, Ben Dougherty from Florida A&M, Craig Ochs from Montana – he used to go to Colorado – Dustin Long from San Houston State, who used to play at Texas A&M, Stefan LeFors, Kyle Orton, and Chris Rix. He’s a great guy, I like Chris.

We did all the three-cone and verticals after we had run and thrown, so it felt like forever. Three-cone I did 6.97, in the short shuttle I did a 4.08. We didn’t do the long shuttle. We did the standing broad jump, and I did a 9’5”. And then the vertical was 33”. The vertical was about the same range that I did at Tech.

I had goals. Even though I had a negative in the 40 yard dash, I really wanted to run a 4.5, everything else I was happy with.

After that we were done, went right back to the hotel and got our stuff packed. We didn’t even spend ten minutes in the hotel, just got on the bus and went to the airport. My daggone flight didn’t even get out, it was delayed. I got to the airport about 5:30, my flight was supposed to leave at 7:15, but it didn’t leave until 9:50. It kept getting pushed back. It was terrible.

Overall, it was a good experience. I feel it helped me out overall. I got to show some people some things. The big thing that I wanted to do was show people, as far as throwing, that’s what I was really looking forward to. Throwing the ball was something that I was real confident about going into. I feel like I impressed a lot of people with my arm strength and my accuracy. The whole thing wore you down a little bit, by the time you got to the physical stuff, but all the interviews and all the testing I feel all right. I mean, I can breeze through the interviews, I don’t have any history that is going to hinder me, and I have no problem talking to people. So I felt confident about going through the interviews and things like that.