Jermon Bushrod had no idea what he was getting into. His final semester of college was underway. His four years patrolling the left offensive tackle position at Towson were finished. And the day that would define his professional aspirations loomed.
"My agent told me to leave the whole month of March open and I thought workouts and stuff like that were going to be done, but I didn't know anything about this whole interview process," Bushrod said.
Through much of April, Bushrod visited 12 NFL teams in 18 days, spanning from as far as San Francisco, to as near as Baltimore.
A number of the teams had already seen him work out at Towson's pro day on March 14 and at 10 individual workouts held at Towson. Thus the purpose of the visits, aside from physicals and internal testing, was to give Bushrod an opportunity to impress with his words as he already had with his physical abilities.
"He was actually going into these team facilities meeting with the [general manager], meeting with the college scouting director, sitting down with the offensive line coach and watching film," Bushrod's agent Rich Rosa said. "They're picking his brain to see what his football mind is like as well as who he is as a person. From day one we told him to treat this like an interview you would take to go get a job."
Along with the business side of things came the perks.Upon arriving in each city, Bushrod was escorted to either a hotel or the team's facilities (in one instance by way of limousine). In some cases he was given a glimpse at the place the teams call home on Sunday afternoons.
"A couple teams showed me their stadium," Bushrod said. "I always had either breakfast or lunch, I went out to dinner with coaches and stuff like that. So they fed me, they treated me pretty good."
He also got a chance to rub elbows with Super Bowl XXII most valuable player and current Tampa Bay personnel executive Doug Williams, 2006 fourth-overall draft pick D'Brickashaw Ferguson and long-time Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. And each reminded Bushrod of a very important approach to the process.
"Have fun with it. That's pretty much all you can do," Bushrod said of their collective message to him.
These visits are obviously a rite of passage earned as a result of an impressive collegiate career, and strong showings at his workouts.
"The workouts are just pretty much the things that I do everyday as a lineman," Bushrod said. "The only hard thing about it is the fact that they want me to practice they're technique. They want to see how coachable I am. So I'll do my technique and they will correct it and I will do theirs."
Bushrod has not only been visited by player scouts, but by numerous NFL offensive line coaches who have put him through the rigors of their team's workouts to see how easily he can adjust to their ways of doing things.
"They think enough of him as a player and a person to bring those coaches in here to evaluate him so that come draft day they're going to be sitting there saying, 'Hey I've worked out the best of the best and Jermon fits in there with the top seven or eight tackles in the country,'" Rosa said.
So the question remains: where will Bushrod land?Prognosticators, such as Sports Illustrated's Peter King have him going as high as the third round. ESPN draft guru Mel Kiper Jr. ranks Bushrod as the No. 7 offensive tackle prospect.
None of this is news to the aspiring NFL lineman, who has realized that paying attention to the pundits does him little good.
"I do look at it, but it does nothing but stress me out, honestly," Bushrod said.
For the time being, Rosa has just told his prospect to enjoy the next few days, leading up to Saturday and Sunday when Bushrod will be watching the draft at his home in King George, Va.
"He pretty much told me to have fun with this weekend," Bushrod said. "Everything will work out."
In a time of uncertainty, that's one thing Bushrod knows for sure.
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