By Ben Lamaak, former Iowa State lineman & CycloneFanatic.com Contributor
Hello again Cyclones fans! It has been a while since I have written a blog. I’ve been really wanting to focus on my Pro Day so I apologize for not keeping you guys updated. As most of you know, we had a very important day yesterday and I’m excited to say that everyone who participated did an outstanding job. I really think that as a whole, we put up some good numbers. Pretty much everyone put themselves in a better situation than they were in before the day began from a draft standpoint. The whole day was very comparable to a job interview. Here is how it all went down.Everything began at 9 a.m. in the weight room. First, we measured in with the scouts where they recorded our height and weight. I weighed in at 302-pounds and was 0642, which means roughly taller than 6-foot-4. From there, we had our hands, arm length, and wing span measured. Then, we started warming up for the 225-pound bench press test. I was able to pump 26 reps, which is one higher than the average at the combine, so I was happy with that. Collin Franklin had a great workout and benched 28 reps, which really had the scouts drooling. After that wrapped up, we stayed in the weight room and did our vertical and broad jumps. I had a best mark of 27.5 inches. This number is something I wanted to get a little higher, but it just didn’t happen yesterday. Mike O’Connell had a great jump, where he was able to record 37.5 inches. Next was the broad jump where I hit 8’7.5. The average at the combine was 8’4, so I was once again happy with that mark. We had several guys go over 10 feet, which is very good mark. After we concluded the jumping portion of the event, we moved into the indoor practice facility for the running portion.We were given 15 minutes to warm up before we started with the 40-yard dash. I clocked in a 5.13, which was a time that I thought was pretty good. A lot of the guys’ times were fast and it was encouraging to see the training pay off. We were given two attempts at the 40. From there, we went to the Pro Agility drill, which is a agility station to measure quickness. Mike O’Connell had a very good time which was around the 4.0 area. My official time was 4.68, which is good, but I wanted to do better. We were only given one shot a piece on this drill. After that concluded, we did the L-cone drill which again is to measure quickness and mobility. I clocked a time of 7.50, which I thought was great and was very happy with it. Once again, we were only given one shot a piece at this drill.At that point, my portion of the testing was over. The skills guys still had to participate in a 60-yard shuttle. It didn’t look very fun to me because it is used to measure conditioning. You should know by now that big linemen and conditioning don’t go well together…After all the timing stuff was done, we participated in position drills. We began this portion of the workout by doing some flexibility stuff. After that, we did some shuffling and bag drills so they could see how we moved. We also had a few blocking stations where a coach from the New England Patriots took us through. After the run blocking portion, we moved to some pass sets. It was a very high-tempo workout, but that is exactly how we do it here at Iowa State so it didn’t bother anyone.After the position drills were over, that pretty much wrapped up the day. I talked to a lot of the scouts afterwards and got some good feedback. I filled out some paperwork and did a personality test for the Kansas City Chiefs. Personality test!? I know I passed that with flying colors, haha.”What would you rather be, a dog or a cat?” I answered a dog of course.Collin Franklin also got a lot of great feedback and you could tell the scouts were salivating. The Chicago Bears tight end coach was there and put Collin through his position drills. Overall, everyone that participated in Pro Day did an awesome job.I really want to thank Coach Oyster for training us because he is the man behind the scene that got us all prepared for this day. Now we are just in a waiting game until the draft. I truly believe we will have a few guys drafted. I plan on writing a few more blogs every few weeks or so to keep everyone updated. Thanks again for reading and GO CYCLONES!!!!!!!
