The NFL scouting combine is a lot like the league itself—big, loud, intense and highly scrutinized. This year four Canadian prospects experienced it first-hand.

By Justin Dunk in Indianapolis

randon Bridge walks into a private meeting room on the first floor of the Crowne Plaza in downtown Indianapolis. Flanked by teal-and-orange Miami Dolphins logos that give life to the otherwise generic walls, the rangy Canadian quarterback prospect shakes hands with the team’s GM, Dennis Hickey, and quarterbacks coach, Zac Taylor, among others, before sitting in a chair placed in the middle of the room. “It’s kind of like American Idol. People are sitting at a table, and you walk in and you’re on a stage,” says Bridge. “There’s a camera right in front of your face recording the interview with 10 men staring at you.”

The Dolphins staffers pepper Bridge with questions: Have you ever done drugs? Have you ever had a drink? Have you ever been in trouble with the law? Have you ever been suspended? “You want to tell them the dead-honest truth because they already have the answers,” Bridge says.

Once they finish checking up on his background, they turn on the film. First, they pull up some plays from his senior season at South Alabama and ask him to walk them through entire calls in detail. Then they switch to highlights from the Dolphins’ 2014 game tape. Bridge is asked to properly identify fronts and coverages, to read defenders and evaluate potential quarterback options on zone-read running plays. But here’s the catch: They don’t even give him the benefit of seeing the plays unfold. “They paused the film right before the ball was snapped,” the Mississauga, Ont., native says, “and I had to tell them what was going to happen.”

Bridge is one of 335 invitees put on the hot seat by NFL teams at the league’s 2015 scouting combine—one of a record four Canadians, a group that includes running back Tyler Varga, offensive lineman Brett Boyko and defensive lineman Christian Covington. Once a simple event designed to help teams make informed draft decisions, over 30 years the combine has refined its processes while also morphing into a big business. This year, there were more than 45 hours of live coverage—a huge leap from the six one-hour recap shows the NFL Network broadcasted in 2004, the first year it televised the event.

What’s more, people are watching. NFL Network drew 529,000 viewers on the Saturday afternoon of the combine—when the quarterbacks, running backs and receivers worked out—almost doubling the number from the same day a year ago (277,000). Media types likewise have been paying more attention, flocking to Indianapolis, the annual home of the event. Nearly 1,100 media passes were granted for the 2015 event compared to 15 or 20 in 2000.

For the players themselves, what makes the airwaves is only a small part of the week. And with millions of dollars on the line (based on draft stocks rising or falling) and eyeballs watching them at all times, it’s an intense experience for all involved.

Players fly into Indianapolis International Airport notice something odd after de-planing: space. A large area gets sectioned off for combine participants, and NFL representatives wait to greet the athletes and direct them to shuttle buses for the 15-minute ride downtown. But along with the privilege comes a huge amount of formality.

Upon arrival at the Indiana Convention Center, which is connected to Lucas Oil Stadium and sits across the street from the Crowne Plaza, players complete reams of paperwork. Each then gets a credential for the event, which needs to be shown to get into the hotel. Every hour of the day at least two guards—not your average mall cops, either—are on duty. “The hotel we stayed at was in lockdown mode,” says Vancouver native Covington. “There was no getting in or out unless you had a proper tag on.”

After players receive the security pass, they’re given a sack full of Under Armour apparel. From that point on, they have to be dressed in the branded gear at all times, head to toe. The company also put up a red-carpeted suite roughly the size of 15 average hotel rooms. Inside, there’s a chef cooking up food, a bar serving smoothies and protein shakes, and a counter supplying athletes with everything from cleats to headphones. There are also couches and big-screen TVs so prospects can play video games. Nike has a similar suite complete with a mini barbershop and massage tables.

Though daily activities can run from 5 a.m. to midnight and don’t leave a lot of lounging time, athletes appreciate the luxury all the same. “It shows you how professional the league is,” Covington says.

As soon as players find their hotel rooms and drop off their luggage, it’s time for an extensive medical at a downtown Indianapolis hospital. Nearly every part of their bodies is X-rayed, scanned or imaged—Varga was in an MRI machine for a total of nine hours. They also took heart tests and had blood work done.

And that’s just the first day. On the second, athletes take their medical files to six rooms full of doctors representing all 32 NFL teams. “I had about 40 X-rays in my file from the first day of medicals,” says Varga, who was raised in Kitchener, Ont. “It was probably 10 lb. worth of film from all the scans.”

In the first room, players lie down in turn on a medical table with doctors around the outside. Past injuries are announced, and images are put on the wall for everyone to see. Then the team physicians have a chance to touch, poke, prod and examine each prospect. “All of a sudden, you get swarmed by a bunch of doctors,” Varga says. “They start pulling on your legs and arms, test your knee for stability, ankles, shoulders, neck and back.”

Throughout the process, doctors speak into hand-held recorders, making observations while looking over each athlete. Finally, when the staff in one room is satisfied, the player gets up and repeats the process in the next room until he’s worked his way through all six.

At the combine, there are two types of interviews: formal and informal. Formal interviews take place in the evening and are set up by teams to individually meet with players in private rooms. The informal chats aren’t scheduled, and are held in an open area.

On the first floor of the hotel, each team has its own suite for the formal interviews, which are scheduled in 15-minute windows. At the two-minute warning for each, an official twice blows an air horn in the main hall. When the meeting is over, they sound it again. “I could hear the air horn from my room on the second floor, and they go from 7 p.m. until midnight,” Varga says.

Bridge finished up his formal Miami interview by watching 17 Dolphins plays. He nailed every question the team asked, recording a perfect score.

Covington had formal meetings with five NFL teams. In one interview, the head coach and defensive coordinator were in attendance. “The first thing they said to me was, ‘Sit down, we don’t have a lot of time to waste,’” Covington says. The team immediately pulled up film of him playing at Rice University. He walked them through some of his team’s defensive schemes, explaining what he was thinking and how he ensured success on each snap that ran on the tape.

At the same time as formal interviews are being conducted, informal interviews are happening in what is known as the train station. The Crowne Plaza is situated right beside Old Union Station in Indianapolis, and they’ve transformed it into a ballroom of sorts. Each team has tables set up and as soon as a player walks into the room, it’s a free-for-all. During one of many sessions, Bridge took a seat at the Carolina Panthers table with quarterbacks coach Ken Dorsey. After Bridge sat down, Dorsey explained six formations, six blocking protections, six pass plays and six run plays. Then Bridge had to spit back all he’d just heard back at Dorsey. “It gets you prepared for an NFL playbook,” Bridge says.

Meanwhile, Varga went through a test from a Dolphins coach whose name he can’t remember because everything was happening so fast. He was given an iPad featuring a multiple-choice quiz with a five-second timer in the corner. He had to identify five defensive fronts, five inside-zone give-or-pull reads and five coverages in the allotted time, or it was an automatic wrong answer. “They want to see how you can handle the stresses of different situations,” says Saskatoon native Boyko, who formally interviewed with the Bengals as well as informally meeting a number of other teams. “Football is very much a mental game, so they want to know you can be trusted when you’re mentally fatigued.”

You can hear the bright Lucas Oil Stadium lights buzzing when the athletes hit the field for testing and positional drills. There’s no music blaring over the speakers or crowd cheering at full volume—it’s dead silent.

On his scheduled day, Bridge was up at 6 a.m. to get ready to run, jump and throw in front of NFL talent evaluators at 9 a.m. Before hitting the field, he posed for his shirtless picture—just like Tom Brady’s famous photo—with his position, combine number, name, school, height and weight written on a whiteboard beside him. Then it was off to the turf.

Bridge walked out of the tunnel dressed in bright orange Under Armour gear with a sharp, focused look on his face. He toed the line for his 40-yard dash and set for three seconds before bursting out of the blocks and reaching top speed to clock a 4.72. Then he quietly walked to the sideline and readied himself to do what he hopes to do one day on an NFL field with a sold-out, raucous crowd in the building: throw the football.

After his first pass attempt skipped to the intended target, Bridge seemed to relax and find a comfort zone. Coming into the combine, the six-foot-four, 229-lb. Canuck wanted to show cleaner, crisper footwork, but his strong right arm still turned out to be the attention-grabber. “His arm and size jumped out to the coaches at the combine,” says one long-time NFL scout. “We saw he has fundamental flaws with his footwork and mechanics, but with good coaching we can fix that. Our scouts had seen him, but the coaches hadn’t. Several coaches will think they can get him right—tap into that talent. Coaches saw the talent, the potential.”

Athletes only get one shot to impress during the on-field drills at the combine—no do-overs. And it seems that Bridge took advantage of his opportunity to boost his draft stock. After all, that’s what the NFL combine is about for each player—making teams believe in you, no matter the oddity of the test, setting or time of day, and trying to surge as high up the board as possible.

David J. Phillip/AP