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Working hard in The Big Easy
Updated: Friday March 02, 2001 3:02 AM
Former Georgia defensive tackle Richard Seymour is expected to be a first-round pick in the 2001 NFL Draft on April 21. Seymour recorded 9 1/2 sacks and 25 1/2 tackles for loss in his career with the Bulldogs, and was named a 2000 first-team All-American by the Walter Camp Foundation and the AFCA. This is the first in a series of Draft Diaries from Seymour. Check back weekly for another NFL Draft Diary from him at CNNSI.com. I came down to New Orleans on Jan. 8 to work with Tom Shaw, who was a track coach at Florida State, and he's one of the top trainers in the country. I just wanted to enhance my chances and know that I didn't leave anything out on the table when it's all said and done, so I wanted to get with the best trainer and just help myself in every way possible. Right now, since the Combine is over, there's only maybe 10 of us. But before that there were maybe 30 or 35 guys down here. Michael Vick was down here, Quincy (Carter) was down here, Gerard Warren -- actually, he's still here. So it's pretty competitive; a lot of the top athletes come down, so you get a chance to work with those guys as well and see how they're doing. Definitely, confidence-wise, you feel great. We've been working hard. We work five and a half days a week, because we go light on Saturday -- all we do on Saturdays is lift weights, just upper-body. It's mostly speed enhancement, just a lot of explosive-type drills, a lot of work with parachutes and resistance cords. We've been doing our individual workouts -- I've been doing defensive line drills, and if you're a quarterback or what have you, working on your five- and seven-step drops.
You know, Mardi Gras is going on down here, and in the evening time after we get through working out, me and some of the guys like Gerard Warren of Florida and Derrick Gibson of Florida State have gone down to Mardi Gras. There's a lot to do here, but at the same time, you have to stay focused on the main goal. Last weekend, I was at the Combine in Indianapolis. I got there Friday morning and took the medical exam. That was a long day over in the hospital, getting X-rays, talking with doctors, checking your blood -- all that sort of stuff, to make sure you can work out. And we had to do a Cybex test that same day, which is basically just checking your hamstrings and your quad strength. Saturday was the physicals, height and weight. I weighed in at 299, and I was 6-foot-6.2. I don't have any old injuries from college, so that was good for me. I didn't work out at the Combine, I'm waiting until March 13 to do all my workouts. The reason for that is, Indianapolis was actually my first time going through the interviews with all the teams, and I had to interview with just about everybody who was there, so mentally, that was a strain. You go from the physicals, where every team's doctor is just pulling on you and making sure there's no existing injuries, to the interviews. The interviews went real well. A lot of it was just background history -- what type of family you grew up in and that sort of thing. With everything that's been going on in the NFL the last couple of years, they just want to do extensive background checks. I had a good interview with New England, Seattle and Arizona, just to name a few that went really well. Everything was real positive, everybody was saying I was real well-spoken, had good, solid character and played hard. That meant a lot to me. There were a few other guys from Georgia up there for the Combine -- Marcus Stroud, Quincy Carter, Kendrell Bell, Jamie Henderson -- so I got to talk to them a bit. I hadn't seen most of them since the bowl game. As far as my individual workout goes, I'm going to do it in Athens, with the rest of the guys from Georgia. I just felt comfortable working out in Athens. Indianapolis was my first time going through the interview process, and I just wanted to take care of that there so I could feel comfortable working out at school. Running a good 40-yard dash is my main focus in training right now. We haven't timed ourselves in the 40 down here -- we haven't timed in anything, really. Everything right now is just working to get better. I want to run in the fours. I'll be down here in New Orleans until March 9, then I'm leaving for South Carolina for a day or two to spend some time with my family, then I'm on my way to Athens.
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