NFL Combine: Wolverine Sean Griffin

When you think about former NCAA players at the Indianapolis combine this weekend you think of stars like Michael Crabtree, Mathew Stafford, Knowshon Moreno, and Andre Smith. When you think about potential Wolverines getting drafted, former seniors like Tim Jamison and Terrance Taylor come to mind.

What about Sean Griffin? Like myself, many Michigan fans might be saying who? Many might remember Michael Griffin the small forward on Michigan's National Championship basketball squad in 1989, but as you have probably guessed that is a different Griffin. Then who is Sean Griffin? Sean was Michigan's long snapper who got invited to the NFL Combine to participate like any player would. Sean was one of two long snappers invited to this years combine, joining him was Hawaii’s Jacob Ingram. Sean has been writing a diary for the Detroit Free Press on his experience which ended on Saturday.

Here is a summary of how it went for Michigan's former long snapper:

Snapping?
"We worked out for four hours. ... The whole kicking process took three hours. There were eight punters and each punter took 14 punts. They did 11 kickoffs for each person, there were 10 guys doing kickoffs, each kicker took 15 kicks, and there were seven kickers."

Lifting?
Sean put up the 225 pound bench press 14 times.

Testing?
Sean took the Wonderlic test at 7:00AM on Friday and also did a strange color test.
The test featured a list of colors, but the words were printed in a different color than the word said. For instance, the word red printed in black or the word blue printed in green. The first time through they asked what color it was and the second time what the word said. Griffin was told he scored in the top 20%.

The 40?
Sean had hoped to run a 4.8 in the 40 but Saturday didn't go as well as planned: "While doing the warm-up to do these, they said, 'You're going to have plenty of time to get ready for your 40 (yard dash), don't worry.' (U-M strength coach Mike) Barwis gave me a progression of things to warm up before my 40. Then they said, 'Change cleats and get ready, specialists you're up in 3 minutes.' We went completely cold, hadn't warmed up at all and had to run." Sean ran a disappointing 5.1 in the 40 which was his final drill at the Combine.

What's next?
"I'm going to rerun at pro day at Michigan (March 13). The disappointing thing is I trained to do all the drills after I did the 40 (shuttle run, agility cone drills, etc.) and they said you guys are done. I said, 'No, I'm ready to do all of them.' They said, 'No, you're done, you don't have to do them.' "

So how do you think it went?
"The two biggest things were your weight and how you snap. It is the 40 a little bit, the 225 test maybe a little bit. But during snapping they had coaches try to bull rush, and I was blocking them fine. That's the only knock teams had against me coming in. They knew I could snap, knew I could cover and didn't know if I could snap and cover. I did it well. I think this was a huge success."