Waiting for a call

Jordan Kent will find out this weekend if 20 months of hard work is enough to land him a job in the NFL

Thursday, April 26, 2007
JOHN HUNT

EUGENE -- Jordan Kent can run the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds and the 100 in 10.4. But the real eye-opener is how far and how fast Kent has come in 20 months.

In August 2005, Kent -- already an established athlete at Oregon in basketball and track -- showed up for the first football practice of his life, admitting that he had no idea how to put on shoulder pads.

Since then, his tireless work and unique athletic ability has paid off. Kent will be at his family's home Sunday awaiting a likely phone call that will turn the former athletic curiosity into an NFL wide receiver.

"If you told me back then that I'd be ready to get drafted or picked up as a free agent, I would have said you're crazy," Kent said. "It's hard to believe, but at the same time I feel like I've worked really hard to get myself in this position, and now it's time to kind of enjoy it."

The NFL draft begins Saturday, and no players from Oregon's 2006 team are expected to be picked on the first day, when the first three rounds are scheduled. Kent, center Enoka Lucas, tight end Dante Rosario, defensive lineman Matt Toeaina and safety J.D. Nelson have a realistic shot at being drafted Sunday when rounds four through seven are completed.

But it is Kent's route, and his upside, that is most interesting to NFL personnel evaluators. Kent caught a 41-yard pass in the second game of the 2005 season, then a 68-yard touchdown two months later, finishing the year with three catches. Then he anchored Oregon's 4x100 relay team to the school's first Pacific-10 Conference title in the event and became the first Division I male athlete to letter in three sports in the same year since 2001-02.

After graduating with a degree in business administration, Kent in 2006 was the Ducks' second-leading receiver with 44 receptions for 491 yards and four touchdowns. But on the final play of Oregon's 38-8 Las Vegas Bowl loss to Brigham Young, Kent suffered a toe injury and needed surgery.

Last week, four months after that surgery and two and a half weeks since running on the repaired toe for the first time, Kent ran the 40 in 4.55 seconds for a group of NFL scouts at Autzen Stadium. The scouts, with ample evidence of his speed from game film and track records, also saw Kent catch passes and make passing route cuts, and they came away impressed.

The Atlanta Falcons are one team that appears unwilling to let Kent slip through undrafted.

"In my mind, I'm telling myself free agent," said Kent, who has NFL size at 6-feet-4 and 220 pounds. "That way, if I get drafted, it's a nice surprise. You should be happy to get in this position, regardless of where you go."

Just as scouts already knew of Kent's speed, they also were aware of his intelligence. Still, the top Wonderlic Personnel Test score among wide receivers -- and ninth overall -- only moves Kent up in the eyes of the NFL, as does the league's recent emphasis on character in the wake of arrests of Adam "Pacman" Jones and others.

Kent scored 35 out of 50 on the 12-minute test that measures different types of thinking. His score put him one spot ahead of John Beck, the cerebral BYU leader who picked apart the Ducks in Las Vegas. (The best score was 41, by Texas guard Justin Blalock; the worst, 4, by Auburn cornerback David Irons and Weber State safety Bo Smith.)

"As you know, there's no real correlation between football success and Wonderlic scores," Kent said. "I think scoring in the top 10 kind of helps myself. It shows people that, hey, he is a fast learner, maybe he can pick up this game."

At the NFL combine, Kent had to answer to the question of whether he was too smart. After all, he is a man with options, and teams had to figure out how long Kent would stick with football.

"I just showed them it's something I really wanted to do, I wasn't just kind of coming here half-hearted -- you know, this athlete running around here -- that I was serious about this and wanted to dedicate myself," Kent said. "I mean, you give up a starting role in basketball, some success in track to pursue this, you've got to let them know it's something you want to do and do it for as long as you can."

So far, it hasn't been long at all.