Check day

Sporting News, The, March 27, 2000 by Terry Frei

His father, Ricky Patton, was a Jackson State running back in the '70s and had a brief NFL career. His mother, Frances Burgess, taught disabled children, but Anderson says he was raised primarily by his grandmother, another longtime teacher. "If you always have teachers in front of you, you're going to be all right," he says, smiling.

Anderson, a strong safety his first two seasons before switching to cornerback, represents the starting point for the workout. At 1:25, the caravan of players and NFL men moves from the gym across the alley to the football dressing room. The scouts sit at the spartan dressing-room stalls, with wooden pegs and no lockers. The players are called in alphabetical order to the wall and the scale. Anderson, wearing his "DB1" shirt from the combine, is first. (If a prospect ever is named "Aardvark," he always will be first in line.) Ireland measures and announces: "Six-oh-two-three!" Translation: 6-2 3/8. Anderson steps onto the scales. His weight--"205!"--is called out, and the NFL men all scribble.

The big news, of course, would be if one of the blue-chippers had shrunk four inches since the combine, or gained 22 pounds on a binge at Krystal, the legendary Southern hamburger chain.

Morris measures 6-3 1/8 and weighs 208--a drop of eight pounds since Indy. The numbers reinforce that the two Jackson State prospects embody the latest trend of big receivers and big cornerbacks.

The group moves to the track.

Morris is stretching. HIS parents and his agent, Ken Kremer of IMG, wait in the bleachers. "I feel I have something to gain," Morris says of the upcoming 40s, "because I didn't run as well as I could at the combine. I don't want to make any excuses. I just ran bad."

Anderson is wearing a headset and listening to music as he warms up. "I have a point to prove," he says. "I'm a lot faster than my times at the combine, so I'm just waiting for this moment."

Bears defensive backs coach Vance Bedford times it perfectly, missing the measuring and arriving at the track at the workout's scheduled starting time. Some coaches and scouts tease him that so many of them were there in the morning, they were pushing to move up the workout so everyone could be assured of catching their flights. Bedford, who has come straight from the airport, laughs. "That's OK," he says, joking, "I would have just come here and asked, `Hey, how'd those guys look?'"

In fact, the sharing of information--especially raw data--among scouts is common. If you can't make the workout in Ames, Iowa, you might trade information with the scout who couldn't make it to Pullman, Wash., on that day you drove 84 mph after landing in Spokane to make it on time.

Each player gets two cracks at the 40. Most of the NFL men are gathered at the finish line, pyramiding with watches outstretched. There is no starter, and Anderson--again, first up--explodes when he is ready. The men click the watches and show them around for comparison purposes. On the all-weather track, Anderson's times range from 4.48 to 4.51 in his first attempt. His times on the second try will be similar.