Jake Long was tossing passes to some children running quick out routes in Central Park on Thursday when one got away from him.
Analysis and discussion of the coming N.F.L. draft and off-season news from around the league.
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The girl on the receiving end could not pluck Long’s errant pass from the morning air, and the ball clunked to the turf. “That’s my fault,” said Long, an offensive tackle. “That was a bad pass. I’m sorry.”
Long could afford to admit a shortcoming because he was no longer under the intense microscope of N.F.L. scouts. He had already been named the newest member of the Miami Dolphins and freshly anointed as the top pick of Saturday’s N.F.L. draft.
Long can afford a lot of things, having signed a five-year, $57.75 million deal ($30 million guaranteed) Tuesday. Now he can brush away the typical anxiety that comes with the draft’s uncertainty.
Long was understandably all grins and had a relaxed gait, throwing touchdown passes and giving high-fives in rapid succession at an N.F.L. event for New York middle-school students.
And when it came time for a question-and-answer session with the six prospects in town for the draft, the children tossed Long softball questions as his draftmates had to sweat out the tough ones.
While quarterback Matt Ryan received a pointed query as to how he felt about Long’s “being the No. 1 pick instead of you,” Long was asked what his favorite team was. (The Dolphins, of course.)
This is a hectic week for prospects, who, except for Long, do not know where they will land Saturday. The schedules of the six invited to the draft — Long, Ryan, Glenn Dorsey, Vernon Gholston, Chris Long and Darren McFadden — are particularly bustling, with visits to a children’s clinic and a hospital, appearances on television shows and at the New York Stock Exchange, a photo shoot atop the Radio City Music Hall marquee, luncheons and more during the two days before the draft.
“I’d probably be a little stressed out,” Long said after the clinic. “It’s awesome because I just get to relax.”
Meanwhile, other draft prospects will have to live with their stomachs in knots.
It is in part Long’s stomach, along with the rest of his impressive physique, that has made him the fifth lineman to go No. 1 over all, and the first since Orlando Pace in 1997. Long will become the first Michigan player to be selected first over all since running back Tom Harmon in 1941.
Long, at 6-foot-7, dropped 20 pounds two years ago by changing his diet and hitting the weight room with ferocity. Now entering a league full of massive linemen whose guts often droop over their belts, Long has visible abdomen muscles on a body that weighs 315 pounds.
“A little bit, yeah you can see some,” Long said, laughing. “When I’m in the weight room I go hard, until I can’t pick up my arms or I can’t walk.”
Andy Moeller, Long’s former offensive line coach at Michigan who is now with the Baltimore Ravens, marveled at Long’s work ethic in the weight room, on the field and in mental preparation.
“He worked his butt off for this,” Moeller said in a telephone interview. “For such a big guy, he is very quick, he bends very well and he has very good strength, like a normal-size guy. He is a strong son of a gun.”
Long proved that point plenty at the league’s scouting combine. He tied Gholston, a defensive end out of rival Ohio State, for the most repetitions (37) in the 225-pound bench press. Long finished with 38, but officials subtracted one from his total.
“They said it bounced off my chest,” Long said. “I was shooting for 40, so I was a little upset with myself and I was a little upset that they took one away from me, too.”
Gholston did get the better of Long on one occasion last season. Long set two personal on-field goals for his senior season: do not allow any sacks and do not commit any penalties. He was called for a false start against Northwestern, his only penalty of the year and the second of his career. But he kept his quarterbacks clean until allowing a sack to Gholston in the regular-season finale against the Buckeyes.
“He swatted my hands down, and I fell,” Long said. “It was a good move.”
That was only the second time Long allowed a sack at Michigan, where he was twice an all-American and the Big Ten lineman of the year. Despite the sack, Gholston said Long was as tough to beat as any lineman his Buckeyes faced.
“He is what he is — the No. 1 pick,” Gholston said.
During Long’s introductory news conference with the Dolphins on Tuesday, he received a congratulatory text message from Lloyd Carr, his coach at Michigan who recently retired. Long squeezed in a quick call to Carr on his way to the airport afterward, before he, too tired to celebrate, spent that night in awe watching himself on television in his hotel room.
Carr was not in awe, though. He knew Long’s capabilities all along, ever since he visited Long’s high school in Lapeer, Mich., on a recruiting trip.
“The superintendent, the assistant superintendent, almost every teacher in the building came down almost like an open house to tell me how special he was,” Carr said in a telephone interview.
Carr relayed that same sentiment to Bill Parcells, the Dolphins’ vice president of football operations. Carr eagerly assured Parcells that he would be just as pleased with Long as he was with Jumbo Elliot, another former Michigan tackle who played for Parcells on the Giants and the Jets.
Carr said Parcells told him, “Lloyd, if he’s as good as Jumbo Elliott, I’m going to be the happiest man in the N.F.L.”
Right now, that title might belong to Jake Long.
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