"The first person to call me was the Oakland Raiders general manager. They called me exactly as my name was being announced so everything hit simultaneously"
Thursday 23 April 2020 13:50, UK
An unassuming Jack Crawford sits restlessly as he watches the seconds tick by while at dinner with his agent in Indianapolis, every passing minute swelling fears of being late for a team interview at the 2012 NFL Scouting Combine.
His agent's efforts to reassure achieve quite the opposite, the Penn State defensive end engulfed by the kind of stress all-too familiar to Draft prospects.
Crawford arrived late to what was an extra interview that had been scheduled by an interested party in the Carolina Panthers, who were primed to dish out a lesson in NFL punctuality.
"I went to dinner with my agent and another player he represents, I was nervous," Crawford told Sky Sports. "This is my previous agent, he's a great agent, a great person. We were at dinner and he kept saying we'd have enough time to get back, and I was like 'I don't want to be late to this interview', that's not a good start.
"As time kept going I was just more and more nervous and he said 'it will be fine'. We ended up being late and the team wasn't too happy about it. I told them 'I'm so sorry, my agent took me to dinner'.
"They said 'if your agent wants you to get a job he should have his priorities better aligned', something along those lines and at this time I was sweating. I'm already behind, I'm screwed now."
It's a tale that encapsulates the concoction of anxiety and intensity stomached by college prospects throughout the pre-Draft process, their childhood visions of NFL stardom soon becoming pressure.
Crawford's admission of it being a "period I felt I could have handled a little better" underlines the self-scrutiny common to draft season. From paranoia over lack of interest, to varying optimism and yo-yoing draft predictions.
"Honestly it's weird because you get requested for interviews and workouts from teams leading up to the draft and as a young player in their 20s you almost take everything as a sign," added Crawford.
"So if no team is asking you to come and visit you must think you don't have a lot of interest. I didn't have any teams ask me to come out for a visit so I thought that was a bad sign, that no team wanted to see me do that extra workout or that any had interest in me. That's not the case."
I think leading up to it it was a lot of pressure. Everybody's aware, everybody's always comparing themselves, wondering who's going to get picked up, thinking 'oh I'm better than this guy', you're just hopeful.
Crawford awoke at the beginning of draft week with an idea of the teams that might select him, one of those being his eventual suitors the Oakland Raiders, who went on to make him the 158th overall pick in the fifth round.
For prospects, the days leading up to hearing their name called can drag by. Five more sleeps to go, four more sleeps to go, three more sleeps to go - or so they hope. For many, there is another spike of uncertainty to endure.
"It does start to feel like the anxiety, the pressure builds up," he said. "A lot of mixed emotions. Not only are you worried about getting a job but there's also the aspect of where you're going to end up.
"A lot of these players during the draft they go home with family and maybe they've gone to college close to where they're from so they've always had that interaction with family. So now there's a sense where you could be drafted to a team across the country, you might have a kid who is from Florida now getting drafted to play in Seattle.
"You're still young. To a lot of young players they believe this is their big break, they believe this opportunity is going to dictate how their future goes and their career maybe in the NFL."
Lights, camera, action. The draft gets underway and the show begins casting its next ensemble.
If time in that Indianapolis restaurant felt like it was flying by, it likely felt the extreme opposite as Crawford sat beside his phone waiting for the call.
He recalls sharing the experience with the D'Andrea family, who had taken him in when he moved from London to New Jersey as a high school student in 2005. They had seen him begin his US adventure, and they were about to see him reach the NFL.
"I was at their house watching TV, waiting as names were getting called by, I was thinking 'I'm not going to get drafted, I'm not going to get drafted' and eventually in the fifth round they called my name to Oakland," he explained.
"I would say the closest thing I could relate it to would be like after a close game that's a win, your adrenaline and emotions are running so high that you kind of experience what is an adrenaline dump. You almost feel exhausted and emotionally drained."
It was that sense of relief. It was an experience I'll remember for the rest of the life.
Relief, elation, pride, inspiration - all of the above. Not to mention an influx of texts, Twitter notifications and Facebook messages from friends and family both in America and back home in London.
Such was the flood of well-wishers that Crawford found himself with a queue of callers.
"The first person to call me was the Oakland Raiders general manager [Reggie McKenzie at the time]," he explained.
"They called me exactly as my name was being announced so everything hit simultaneously and everyone's cheering in the background while I'm just trying to speak to the general manager.
"I spoke to him and I remember there was another call coming through from a coach so I had to screen those calls, that was another thing I remember about it. It was a situation where I had to turn off all my notifications to try and call my family back in London."
It can sometimes get lost that beyond the draft extravaganza and the scouting profiles and the fanfare that there is a job to be won on the practice field.
In Crawford's case, life in the NFL and the task of asserting himself did not take long to sink in.
"Every player in their head has a dream and they want to make the most of it, they want to become the next biggest in whatever position they're playing," he explained.
"Then when you report to the facility you'll meet all the coaches and the rookies who you've been drafted with. When you report with all the other rookies who are in the same position you still have a feeling of let's say confidence.
"Then the rest of the team come back and that's when you realise you're at the bottom of the pecking order and you are not that special.
"It hits you and then reality slowly sets in once you go through spring training and training camp. There's a lot of people who I remember coming in with felt like 'this is now what we signed up for'. Your opinion doesn't really matter."
Crawford featured as a backup in his rookie season and appeared in 15 games the following year before being waived by the Raiders in August 2014.
He has since spent time with the Dallas Cowboys as well as the Atlanta Falcons, and in April 2020 signed with Mike Vrabel's Tennessee Titans.
By now he carries the experience to vouch for the value of an unfaltering work ethic and commitment behind the scenes, along with the knowledge the draft is far from the be-all and end-all.
"Just before the draft happens I would say to every rookie to not get too pent up on the draft, don't get too anxious," he said. "A lot of people I've played with and know who have gone on to be extremely successful in the NFL were undrafted and come from small schools that a lot of people haven't heard of.
"It's a team sport but the nature of the business is individual. A lot of it is how much extra work you put in, in the NFL the margin is so small that a lot of people who have had long-careers, it's because of the extra work they put in off the field."
Watch all three days of the 2020 NFL Draft unfold on Sky Sports, April 23-25 - starting with live build-up to day one from 10pm on Thursday, April 23 with the first picks expected to be made at 1am
