Here's Bryan Randall's report from Pro Day #1 on the VT campus last Thursday, March 17th, when NFL scouts and coaches arrived at VT to work out the VT seniors.

The night before is nerve racking, not knowing exactly what you’re going to be doing, making sure you put the right things in your body. I ate salads and drank a whole lot of water, trying to get hydrated. I really couldn’t sleep, just tossed and turned pretty much all night.

It’s not even about being nervous, I don’t know what it is. I couldn’t even sleep before games. I guess it’s about me knowing something’s coming up, I guess it’s more about being excited or anxious than nervous. I woke up in the middle of the night about every hour. Then I got up the next morning around 9:00, ate some fruit, things like that, just getting ready to go.

I arrived over there around 10:00, like other guys, just got in there and relaxed, just trying to get your mind right. We had Mikal Baaqee, Mike Daniels, Eric Green, Vinnie Fuller, Vinnie Burns, Jon Dunn, Jim Davis, James Griffin, and C.W. Clemmons from Hampden-Sydney – he's a running back.

I think there were around 15 or 20 teams represented there. The Packers, Patriots, Falcons, and Dolphins were there. There were some more guys … some of the coaches I didn’t even get a chance to see where they were from. Usually they have some sort of a pullover with a team logo on it, but not necessarily. Some of them I didn’t catch.

There were more teams there last year than this year, to see KJ and DeAngelo, and there were a couple head coaches there last year, too. There weren’t really any quarterback coaches there this time, and there were a lot of DB coaches for Eric Green, Vinnie Fuller, Mike Daniels and James Griffin.

On that I day probably lost about three pounds, or within two days. We weighed in at Merryman Center. We weighed in, and I weighed in at 223. Height was 6.003, which I guess is a tiny bit higher than what I was at the Combine, which was 6.002. My arm length was shorter by about an inch. I had weighed 225 at the Combine.

The first thing you do is go in there and all the players get ready to do the bench, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it at the Combine either, because it’s not required for quarterbacks to do it. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on my arm, so I didn’t do the bench press, I didn’t do the vertical. I did the broad jump and actually got another inch. I got 9’6” and I got 9’5” at the Combine.

I watched the bench press; actually I spotted for the majority of the guys. I want to say the highest was 25 (25 reps of 225 pounds), and that was by Kevin Lewis. The majority of the guys were around 20, and some of the DBs were around 12 or 13. But the majority of the guys were around 20 reps.

After that we went down to the field house. I chose to run the 40 because I thought I could improve my time from what I did at the Combine. I knew running on turf though, it’s always tougher. Your fastest time is going to be, of course, on the track if you’ve got an opportunity to do that. From what I know, I ran in the 4.6 range again. I’m hoping in the lower 4.6 range. Everybody has a stopwatch and you don’t really know what your time is.

A lot of people run on different surfaces, and all that goes into account. Supposedly they add a tenth onto your time if you run on a track because it’s supposed to be a faster surface. [When running 40s for Coach Gentry], we run on the track. So those times are going to be faster than those guys who run on the turf, so that’s all taken into consideration.

All the scouts pretty much have stopwatches, and they’re down there at the finish line with a stopwatch in their hands. Pretty much every individual scout has one so they can compare times, and I guess average them at the end. Here it’s hand held times, compared to the Combine where they’ve got electronic times, but you’ve also got scouts doing hand held times [at the Combine]. We run two times at Pro Day.

You start on your own. You go to the line and you pause for a second and then go. If they feel you didn’t pause for a second, or if you leaned into it, then they’ll stop you, but other than that you just line up on your own, get in your stance, and when they see you are ready to run you just pause and then take off. When your right hand comes off the ground is when the clock starts.

After we did the 40 we started doing the NFL shuttle drills and the three-cone drill. The NFL shuttle is basically lateral movement, side to side. You go five yards to your right, touch the line. Then 10 yards to your left, 5 yards past the original starting point, and touch the line. You go 5, then 10, then 5. 20 yards total. I just went ahead and took my Combine time for that. I didn’t do any of those types of drills, I just took my Combine time. I was pretty satisfied with all the field drills, everything but the 40. So the shuttle was the one thing I did on the field, and while the other guys were doing stuff I was just throwing the ball a little bit.

After they did the DB drills and after the defensive linemen with Jim Davis, a guy from the Texans asked me if I would throw. I was like “I planned on it.” So they got me some throws in. It was actually a guy from the Patriots that ran me through some drills. I guess some of the scouts stayed and watched it.

It was similar to the Combine. I had Richard Johnson, Jared Mazzetta and C.W. Clemmons running routes from the backfield. So slants, hitch, outs, comebacks, digs, close corner and fly patterns. The ceiling in the field house is kind of low, so on the fly you can only put so much air under it. I only threw one fly in the field house, so it's not a big deal. As far as everything else goes, there’s no wind in there, so it’s really great for throwing the ball.

I feel I did real well as far as throwing the ball. Right now I’m throwing the ball with a lot of zip, I’m real accurate throwing the ball, and my feet are quick in my setup. I really think that the more that people see me throw, the more they are going to be impressed by my throwing ability. I feel like anytime I get the opportunity to work out that it’s only helping me. Coach Rogers was there. I talked to him before and afterwards, and he told me I did a good job.

Scouts really don’t say much. Like I said, I don’t think there were any quarterback coaches there. I feel like when the quarterback coaches get here, then we’ll see. The guy that worked me out from the Patriots, maybe he does something with the wide receivers, I don’t know. But he knew his drills and knew what was going on.

I felt like it was a good day. I would have liked to have had more coaches out there as far as quarterback coaches seeing me, but I feel that on the drills that I did, I improved. Overall I feel good about what’s going on.