FanPost

One More Reason To Like Carriker

The few games I watched Nebraska play this year, Adam Carriker was always a monster on defense.  I mean, the man was a freak, an animal, a motorized terror on the Cornhusker D-line.

I live here on the East Coast, so I don't get to see Carriker very much, but when I got the NFL Network and witnessed his combine feats, I marveled at how incredibly gifted this player was and fantasized about how great he would look with a silver helmet and a blue star on each side of it.

Recently, I stumbled across this diary that he kept during his "stay" at the combine in Indianapolis.  A man his size is not supposed to be that quick, agile and smart.  The strength goes without saying, but I really, really hope that teams overlook him and we draft Carriker.

Pat Kirwan of NFL.com & NFL Network compares the big DE to Richard Seymour, and he believes that AC would be an ideal fit for the 3-4 defensive scheme.

Anyway, I've enclosed a preview of Adam Carriker's diary at the combine below.  But before you read it, check out this background info that was written about him.  Then, read what he had to say about his combine experience.

Defensive End Adam Carriker registered 20.5 sacks and 134 tackles in 45 career games for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.  He was chosen as the 2006 Big 12 Defensive Lineman of the Year, following a season in which he compiled 52 tackles and a team-leading seven sacks.  The 6-foot-6, 290-pounder possesses tremendous strength and versatility, making him one of the most complete defensive ends entering the 2007 NFL Draft.  

Last Friday I made the trip to Indianapolis for the NFL Scouting Combine.  Unfortunately my plane got delayed by about two or three hours so when I finally got to Indy it was about 3 p.m. and as a result I immediately got to work.  

The first thing I did was the Cybex test right there at the hotel which tests your quad and hamstring strength.  I didn't get my test result on that, but I think I did well.  Then I spent the rest of my day either getting X-rayed or waiting to get X-rayed.  I must have spent about five hours at the hospital doing medical stuff.  They ran tests on my heart, drew blood and took a bunch of different X-rays.  

I got back to the hotel later that night, attended an orientation and also went out to get a good dinner.  By 11:30 p.m. I was tired and in bed.

I got up the next morning at 4:45 a.m. to take a drug test and then I hit breakfast.  After that we were split into groups and sent to take more physicals.  Basically the doctors pull and yank and examine you, which took about five hours in all.  

We also got weighed in that morning.  My measurements were 6-6, 296 pounds and that's what I expected.  During the physicals, one doctor made me get an MRI on my left knee so I had to go back to the hospital to get that done.  It took three hours round-trip for just the MRI.  I made it back to the hotel for dinner at 6 p.m. and then had meetings with NFL teams from 9-11 p.m.  I went to bed after that and got to sleep-in until 6 a.m. that next morning.

After breakfast on Sunday morning, I had a bunch of psychological tests to do.  One of the tests was a 300-question test that focused on how you see yourself reacting in certain situations.  They would also show pictures and say certain words to you and then ask you to remember everything in detail and recite it back to them.

An example was they would say a bunch of letters and numbers together such as: 1D, 3S, 24F, 9G, 14P ... and I would have to say the numbers in order first and then say the letters in alphabetical order.  So you had to remember them and put them in order.  Although I did well on all the tests, they actually said I did the best on that scrambling test.  

During the afternoon I did a couple informal interviews with teams and then went to do the bench press.  I did 33 reps at 225 pounds and I don't think there was another defensive end to do that many.  

After that, I did some interviews with the press and recorded an interview so the teams that didn't get a chance to speak with me could check out the recorded interview.  In the evening I had 12 meetings of about 15-20 minutes each.  Each team has their own room and you walk in there and the head coach, the GM, the director of college scouting and in my case, the defensive line coach, are all there with about a dozen other people ready to ask you questions.  

Different teams did different things because some were more laid back than others.  Some teams were real intense and tried to get on your case to see how you would react.  One guy started yelling at me "what are you going to do when we pay you millions of dollars and how do we know you won't blow it on partying?"  I'm not sure if I had the right reaction, but I thought it was hilarious because I didn't know who he was and he was yelling at me like he was my father.  

So I started laughing and so did everyone else in the room.  It's real hard to figure out which teams are and are not interested in you because they're all kind of playing mind games with you.  

For the rest of Adam Carriker's combine diary, click on the following link:

http://www.nflplayers.com/news/draft...

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