CULVER CITY, Calif. -- Georgia linebacker Alec Ogletree put himself in an awful spot heading into the NFL Scouting Combine.
Thanks to a DUI arrest a week before the event, Ogletree turned the combine into a referendum on whether his considerable talents as a football player were worth the baggage he'd bring with him.
Around The League spoke with Ogletree about his combine experience during the linebacker's trip to NFL Network studios on Thursday. Ogletree was a busy man in Indianapolis, meeting with 25 teams. We asked how much of each interview focused on off-the-field issues.
"It was pretty much 50-50," Ogletree said. "They asked me, 'Why should we believe you?' and stuff like that. Once I gave them an answer, they took what they needed from me and basically moved to the football aspect."
Did teams use different strategies in discussions of his DUI arrest and drug and discipline issues at Georgia?
"Some teams went more in-depth with it. Some teams just wanted to know, then moved to football," he said. "Each team that I met with I felt like it was a good interview. I told them my story and what happened and it just went from there."
The Cincinnati Bengals were one of the teams that met with Ogletree. He said they put him through the same memory exercise as Oklahoma offensive lineman Lane Johnson, who called his Bengals interview "probably the weirdest meeting I've ever been a part of."
Ogletree agreed.
"It was weird."
If we were Ogletree, we'd become an altar boy from now until April 25. Literally, we'd go to a local church and volunteer our services until someone took us off the board in the first round. Ogletree simply has too much on the line to get in trouble again.
Follow Dan Hanzus on Twitter @DanHanzus.
