The hallways of Lucas Oil Stadium after the Wonderlic test had that specific quality belonging to major stadiums when there is no game on: a mix of artificial lighting, echoing footsteps, and the distinct sense that the space was designed to contain something that was not currently taking place—even if something was happening, something that simply required fewer people and less noise to unfold.
Wyatt exited the conference room with the test booklet still in hand before the Combine staff could ask for it, as no one was permitted to take the booklet outside the facility. He placed it on the first available table outside the room and kept walking toward the spot where Rosenhaus had told him he would be waiting once the exam concluded.
Another quarterback was exiting at the same time through the side door of the room, trailing a step behind Wyatt for the first few seconds down the corridor before matching his pace.
"Jared Goff," the quarterback said, extending his hand to Wyatt with the natural ease of someone who had made that introduction dozens of times over the past few hours, turning it into an automatic gesture without making it any less genuine.
"Wyatt Sterling," Wyatt replied, shaking his hand.
Goff was the exact height Wyatt had calculated when studying film during prep week, possessing the distinct composure of a player who had just completed a task and had not yet begun processing what came next—which, in that environment, was the exact same state Wyatt found himself in.
"How'd it go?" Goff asked as they walked.
"Good," Wyatt said. "A few caught me on time right at the end."
"Same here," Goff said. "The logic section at the end moves fast."
"The matrices," Wyatt said.
"The matrices," Goff confirmed with the nod of two people who had just shared the exact same experience from different seats in the same room.
They walked a stretch further in silence, the echo of their footsteps blending with the muffled hum of the stadium echoing from somewhere indeterminate within the venue.
"Drills tomorrow," Goff said eventually.
"Yeah," Wyatt said.
"Forty yards?"
"Among other things," Wyatt said.
Goff smiled slightly—the smile of someone who recognized that the conversation was friendly, yet framed within a context where both understood precisely where the other stood on the draft board. That positioning made them something that wasn't quite rivals, since the draft doesn't function as direct head-to-head competition, but wasn't quite anything else either.
"Good luck tomorrow," Goff said as they reached the point in the hallway where their paths diverged toward different areas of the stadium.
"You too," Wyatt said.
Rosenhaus was waiting in the area designated by Combine staff for agents and representatives, phone in hand, with three different people orbiting him in various states of pending conversation. When he spotted Wyatt, he held up a single finger toward the three orbiting figures—a gesture signaling that his conversation with the prospect took absolute priority over everything else at that moment.
"How was it?" Rosenhaus asked as Wyatt reached him.
"Good," Wyatt said.
"What'd you finish with?"
"43 out of 50," Wyatt said. "Give or take. The last five or six were tight on time."
Rosenhaus nodded, his expression shifting into calculation as he listened. "43 is a solid number for a quarterback. Teams are going to like that. What they don't want to see is a low number, because they interpret a QB who doesn't process information quickly on the Wonderlic as someone who'll have the same issue with NFL blitzes."
"Makes sense," Wyatt said.
"Doctor say everything looks clear?" Rosenhaus asked, beginning to walk toward the exit at his characteristic speed when he was finished with one topic and moving to the next.
"All clean," Wyatt said.
"Perfect," Rosenhaus said. "You have two team interviews this afternoon. We need to review specific answers before you go in, because what you say in those rooms is just as important as what you do on the field tomorrow—sometimes more."
Wyatt followed him toward the stadium exit, with the Indianapolis cold waiting outside.
The hotel carried the quiet stillness typical of mid-afternoon hours when most guests are out handling whatever brought them to the city. Wyatt reached his room after his afternoon interviews with Rosenhaus, closed the door, and sat on the edge of the bed with his phone in hand.
He dialed Blaire.
She answered on the third ring with the voice of someone who had been waiting for the call, but didn't want it to sound like she had been waiting.
"How'd it go?"
"Good," Wyatt said. "Afternoon interviews went well. Drills tomorrow."
"How were today's tests?"
"Wonderlic went well. Drew says it's a solid number."
"Forty-three out of fifty," Blaire repeated, her tone processing whether that was high or low. "That's eighty-six percent."
"Rosenhaus didn't frame it as a percentage, but yeah," Wyatt said.
"Not bad," Blaire said. "Though I probably would have done better."
"Probably," Wyatt said.
Blaire laughed softly, and in the sound of that laugh, Wyatt could hear that something about the day had been harder than she was willing to admit directly at the start of the call—which was her way of handling difficult things: starting with what was neutral before reaching what wasn't.
"How was your day?" Wyatt asked.
"Same," Blaire said. "I was reading until my stomach said no."
"The nausea again?"
"The nausea again," Blaire confirmed with the exact same cadence Goff had used when confirming the Wonderlic matrices—the tone of two people sharing the exact same experience from different positions. "This time after lunch. I lasted until about four, and then it passed."
"It'll pass soon," Wyatt said.
"So you say."
"Everyone who knows about this says so."
"The people who know about this are people who have already gone through it and therefore suffer from survivor bias," Blaire said. "People currently going through it don't usually say it's about to pass."
Wyatt smiled in silence, because at that specific moment there was nothing more useful to say than a smile, even if Blaire couldn't see it and even if the smile was small enough that it probably wouldn't have been visible even if he had been in the same room.
"How are you feeling for tomorrow?" Blaire asked after a moment.
"Ready," Wyatt said with the brevity he reserved for things that were true and required no extra words to prove it.
"Forty yards?"
"Among other things."
"What time do you think you'll run?"
"I don't know," Wyatt said, which was the honest answer. He had run the forty-yard dash enough times in training to have an estimate, but training estimates and official Combine times were products of sufficiently different environments that Wyatt preferred not to state a number that might prove incorrect in either direction.
"I think you're going to run a 4.4," Blaire said.
"4.4 would be extraordinary for a quarterback."
"You are extraordinary for a quarterback," Blaire said with the direct tone she used when stating something she considered objectively true rather than a subjective opinion requiring further qualification.
The two kept talking for a while longer, the conversation drifting toward things that were neither the Combine nor the nausea, but the kinds of things people discuss when they are in different cities and want the other to know the day held more than what had already been mentioned. When Wyatt finally said he needed to sleep because tomorrow started early, Blaire said, "Alright, go to sleep, you're a professional athlete now." Wyatt said, "Not yet," and Blaire said, "In two months, yes," and they said goodbye.
Wyatt entered the Lucas Oil Stadium locker room at nine in the morning, his Combine gear set on the table in front of him and his assigned number pinned to the chest of the nameless jersey all prospects wore during drills.
He put on his shoulder pads first, using the automatic motion of someone who had done the exact same thing for years and didn't need to think about the sequence or strap tension—his hands knew without his mind having to instruct them.
The helmet next.
Then the cleats he had brought from the apartment, as Rosenhaus had advised him to wear his own footwear rather than the pair provided by the Combine. Own footwear was the footwear he had trained in, and the Combine was no time to make adjustments.
In the locker room, other quarterbacks were at various stages of the same process, wrapping themselves in the quiet concentration of individuals who had reached a moment that had been the primary target for months—a moment that, now that it was here, demanded every ounce of available energy, with none to spare on unnecessary conversation.
Wyatt stood up.
They headed out to the field.
The indoor field at Lucas Oil Stadium was illuminated with the intense artificial brightness characteristic of domed venues, complete with football field markings painted to exact specifications. In the sideline stands sat scouts, executives, and coaches from all thirty-two league teams, armed with tablets, notebooks, and eyes locked onto the turf with the focused intensity of people who knew what they were about to see over the next three hours would shape decisions worth tens of millions of dollars.
The quarterbacks warmed up first, executing the familiar routine Wyatt had performed thousands of times during Clemson practices. In that specific setting—with NFL scouts in the stands—it served the exact same purpose it always had: preparing the body for what was coming, nothing more.
The forty-yard dash came first.
Wyatt lined up at the starting mark, his cleats positioned precisely where he wanted them, his hands set in the stance he had rehearsed. He stared down the track for a single second before the signal came.
He burst out.
The first ten yards dictated the final time—Wyatt knew it, his body knew it, and everything he had trained on over recent weeks at Clemson's facilities with the physical trainer Rosenhaus had specifically hired for Combine prep condensed into those first ten yards where acceleration determined everything that followed.
He crossed the forty-yard line.
There was a two-second pause before the times flashed on the stadium screens, during which Wyatt literally heard the movement in the stands—the distinct sound of many people watching the exact same spot at the exact same time, processing what they had just witnessed.
4.31 seconds.
For a quarterback, it was a time that rarely ever happened.
In the stands, several scouts lowered their eyes to their tablets simultaneously—a synchronized movement of individuals who had just received a metric they needed to record before the next test began, wanting that entry finalized before the next prospect stepped up to the starting line.
Precision passing drills followed the athletic testing, with quarterbacks rotating through various stations where Combine coaches directed each exercise while team scouts observed from fixed positions on the field.
The deep pass produced the second wave of movement in the stands.
Wyatt had received his instruction from the Combine coach: a specific route, a specific receiver, and a specific release point. He processed all that information in the single second available before the receiver took off and the coach began timing the release.
The ball left his hand on the exact trajectory Wyatt had calculated before letting go—a trajectory leaving the smallest possible margin of error given the receiver's angle and speed at the moment of the throw.
It dropped exactly where it needed to drop.
The receiver caught it without breaking stride.
In the stands, one of the Rams executives said something to the scout beside him without taking his eyes off the field. The scout nodded, writing something on his tablet, and both kept watching Wyatt as he moved to the next station with the same steady stride he had maintained all morning—the stride of someone who had come to do a job and wasn't finished yet.
Rosenhaus stood in the designated agents' area, phone in hand, eyes fixed on the field. When the deep ball reached the receiver and dropped exactly where it needed to drop, he said nothing and didn't change his expression—he wasn't the type to show public surprise at something he had calculated would happen.
Author thought
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