The suitcase was already by the door since the night before because Wyatt was not the type of person to leave luggage for the morning of the trip, although in this particular case, the night before had been long enough for the efficiency with which he had packed not to be exactly representative of the mental state with which he had gone to sleep.
Blaire was in the kitchen when Wyatt finished checking for the last time that he had everything he needed in the suitcase and that the phone charger was in his coat pocket and not in one of the side pockets of the suitcase where it invariably ended up when he didn't check it and where it was impossible to find before a morning flight.
"Everything's set," Wyatt said from the hallway.
"Five minutes," Blaire said from the kitchen without Wyatt having asked her if she was ready, because Blaire had learned that Wyatt needed to know that everyone in the apartment was processing the same time urgency as him, even though in this particular case Wyatt was in no rush because the flight was at eleven and it was eight-forty.
Blaire appeared from the kitchen with a mug in her hand, her hair still down, wearing the flannel shirt she used for being at home, and looked at Wyatt next to the door with the suitcase beside him and his coat already on, as if the airport were at the end of the hallway and not twenty minutes away by car.
"You're already ready," Blaire said, looking at the coat and the suitcase and Wyatt's posture next to the door with the intonation of someone stating a fact rather than asking a question.
"Yeah," Wyatt said.
Blaire set the mug on the entryway table, walked over to him, and put her hands on his chest for a second before Wyatt leaned down to give her a quick kiss on the lips and then on her forehead, and then looked at her again with that expression that wasn't exactly a smile, but something closer to the calm of someone who has everything processed even if not completely resolved.
"Good luck," Blaire said.
"I'm not going to need it," Wyatt said.
"I know," Blaire said. "But anyway."
Wyatt grabbed the suitcase and opened the door, and Blaire stayed on the threshold while he walked toward the car with the cold of February in South Carolina coming through the hallway, the mug steaming on the entryway table, and the NFL Combine just a flight away.
International Airport in Indianapolis, Indiana
The flight from Greenville to Indianapolis made a layover in Charlotte, and Wyatt spent most of the trip with his headphones on, listening to the same playlist he used in the days leading up to important games, which was a playlist without any apparent logic in the order of the songs but that he had built during his time at Clemson and that produced the type of concentration Wyatt needed before the moments that mattered.
Rosenhaus was waiting for him at the Indianapolis airport in the same suit he wore the day he appeared at the apartment, or one similar enough that Wyatt couldn't tell the difference, phone to his ear, talking to someone with the concentration of someone having three conversations in parallel even if only having one, and who, when he saw Wyatt, didn't interrupt the call but raised a finger to him in the universal gesture of one minute while finishing saying what he had to say.
Wyatt waited with his suitcase by his side.
"Sterling," Rosenhaus said when he put the phone in his pocket with the same speed with which he had spent the last ten minutes talking on it. "Flight was good, right?"
"Yeah," Wyatt said.
"Perfect," Rosenhaus said, taking off walking toward the exit without waiting for an additional answer, because he was the type of person who asked questions to get the information he needed and not to maintain a conversation. "Tomorrow at eight you have measurements and the medical exam. That lasts approximately two hours. Then there's a media session with questions from the pool of credentialed journalists where you're going to answer the minimum necessary, and we're going to talk tonight about exactly what 'minimum necessary' means in this context."
"And the drills?" Wyatt said.
"Saturday," Rosenhaus said. "You quarterbacks work on the field on Saturday the twenty-seventh alongside the wide receivers and the running backs. That's what the teams see, that's what NFL Network broadcasts, and that's what matters."
"And the team interviews?"
"They're distributed throughout this weekend," Rosenhaus said. "I'll pass you the schedule tonight. We have two tomorrow and three after Saturday's drills."
Wyatt nodded as they walked out into the cold of Indianapolis in February, which was considerably colder than the South Carolina cold he had left that morning.
Hotel
The hotel where the draft prospects were staying was the same one where Rosenhaus had booked a room, and Wyatt reached his room by mid-afternoon with his suitcase still unopened on the bed and his phone in his hand.
He sent a message to Blaire first.
Wyatt:Arrived safe cold combo
The answer arrived before Wyatt finished unlocking the messaging app.
Blaire:Obviously it's Indiana in February
Then he sent a message to his mother, who responded in less than a minute with several emojis that Wyatt didn't try to interpret individually, but processed as a complete communicative unit of maternal support, and then he sent a message to his dad, who responded after a long time with two words that were do it right, which Wyatt saved on his phone with the same importance with which he saved any training instruction he considered relevant.
He slept well.
Which was something Wyatt couldn't guarantee before all the important moments of his life, but which in this case occurred with the naturalness of someone whose body had learned to produce the necessary rest on the nights before important days, regardless of what his head was processing before turning off the light.
The Next Morning
At 7:45 on Friday, Rosenhaus knocked on the door of Wyatt's room with the same absence of preamble with which he did everything else.
Wyatt was already awake.
They ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant with the brevity of two people who have a specific schedule to keep, and Rosenhaus went over one last time what Wyatt could expect during the next two hours—which was the process of measurements and the medical exam—and what he could not expect, which was any question about draft projections or about specific teams that had shown interest, because the answer to any of those questions in that context was the same as the answer to all the rest: no comment.
They arrived at Lucas Oil Stadium by car, with the stadium appearing from the Indianapolis highway like something Wyatt had seen in images enough times to recognize, but which in person had a different presence that the images had not fully communicated, and which Wyatt processed from the car window without saying anything during the seconds it took him to assimilate it.
There was a line of journalists and cameras at the main entrance of the stadium that the Combine staff had organized behind a security fence, defining the access space for prospects with enough precision for traffic to be possible without anyone being able to stop anyone, even if they might try.
Wyatt got out of the car.
The cameras moved toward him immediately with the specific speed of cameras that have been waiting for hours for someone in particular to arrive and finally see him arrive, and the journalists started talking at the same time with the intensity of people who know they have approximately twenty seconds before the prospect crosses the access door.
"Wyatt, how are you feeling heading into the Combine?"
"Wyatt, what do you say to the teams evaluating you this week?"
"Sterling, first reaction to Lucas Oil?"
Wyatt walked without stopping, his head slightly down—not in the sense of someone avoiding the camera, but in the sense of someone going from one point to another with the concentration of someone who knows where he needs to be and when.
Rosenhaus walked one step behind him and didn't answer any questions either, because that was exactly the function of an agent in that specific context: guaranteeing that the prospect reached the inside of the stadium with the same mental state with which he had left the hotel.
The access door closed behind them and the noise of the journalists died down immediately, replaced by the interior noise of the stadium, which was different from the noise of stadiums when there's a game, but had its own acoustic logistics of staff moving around, doors opening, and names being called from different points of the venue.
Lucas Oil Stadium
Inside, the Combine staff had the process organized with the efficiency of an organization that has done the same thing for decades in the same place, with slight annual variations that don't change the fundamental structure of the event, and Wyatt was directed toward the measurement area, where there were medical and technical personnel waiting with the same equipment Wyatt had seen in the videos Rosenhaus had sent him the previous week so he would know exactly what was going to happen and in what order.
The measurements first.
Height with shoes and without shoes, which in Wyatt's case produced the numbers that the scouting department of any team evaluating him during the season already had, but which needed to be confirmed in the official Combine environment before being registered in the league's system.
Weight.
Arm length.
Hand size, which was a measurement Wyatt didn't know mattered so much until Rosenhaus explained to him two weeks prior that for NFL offensive coordinators, a quarterback's hand size was one of the most discussed indicators in draft rooms, because it partly determined the ability to control the ball in adverse weather conditions, and in Wyatt's case, the numbers were favorable.
The medical exam took more time.
There were Combine staff doctors and doctors from several specific teams that had requested access to the exam of the prospect they were interested in, reviewing the same medical history from different angles, looking for different information depending on the specific needs of each franchise.
Wyatt went through each station with the patience of someone who had understood that patience was part of what was being evaluated just as much as any number the Saturday drills were going to produce.
While that was happening inside the stadium, Rosenhaus was in the access area for agents and representatives, where general managers and scouting directors from all thirty-two teams in the league circulated with the specific concentration of people who have one week to gather all the information they are going to need for the decisions they are going to make in April, knowing that every conversation in that space was potentially relevant to some of those decisions.
Rosenhaus knew almost everyone in that space.
He had negotiated contracts with most of the teams represented and had had pre-draft conversations with almost all the scouting directors sitting in the stadium stands that morning, evaluating the prospects of the class of 2016 with the same professional eye with which they had done so in previous years.
When Les Snead walked past his area, Rosenhaus exchanged two sentences with him that weren't exactly a conversation, but were enough for each to know that the other knew what was at stake that week.
When an Eagles scout approached with the kind of casual question NFL scouts ask when they want information they don't want to ask for directly, Rosenhaus responded with the same kind of casual answer that didn't give the information they were looking for, but didn't close the conversation completely either, because closing conversations at the Combine was not something Rosenhaus did unless it was absolutely necessary.
In the interior measurement area, Wyatt was signing his name on the last document of the official Combine registration process while staff directed him toward the room where the quarterbacks of the class of 2016 were going to take the Wonderlic test in the next fifteen minutes.
The room was a stadium conference room with tables arranged in rows, pencils already placed on each table, and Combine staff at the door checking credentials before letting each prospect in. Wyatt walked in, sat down in the chair pointed out to him, and looked around for a moment.
There were other quarterbacks in the room that Wyatt recognized from the season, some of whom he had faced on the field and others he had seen in the highlight reels Rosenhaus had sent him during the weeks of preparation leading up to the Combine, and who in that specific context of the room, with pencils on the tables and Combine staff at the door, all had the exact same expression: the expression of people who have done everything they could do to prepare for this moment, and now all that was left was to execute it.
The Wonderlic test was fifty questions in twelve minutes.
Wyatt picked up the pencil.
The Combine staff gave the signal to begin.
Author thought
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