Max Unger started all 51 games of his Oregon career on the offensive line, and helped Oregon set and re-set program rushing records the past two years. Now he’s training in Los Angeles for the NFL Combine in February in hopes of getting drafted in April’s NFL Draft. He spoke with Emerald sports editor Andrew Greif about the Senior Bowl, a day in his life, and where he’ll be for the draft.
(The Senior Bowl) went pretty well. I was playing guard and center and so that was pretty good. The game was pretty cool, expect for the fact that we got our butts kicked. The game doesn’t really matter as much as the practices, though. It was a fun experience, it was a grind, a pretty long week of practices and stuff. All in all it went really well.
I’d say on average (a typical day is) from 8 to 4 p.m. or 8 to 5 p.m. … My first workout starts at 8 o’ clock. So in typical L.A. fashion it takes me quite a while to get there. I’m up at 6 a.m. and I try to get there a little early, do a little physical therapy around 7:30 and then right to the first workout. Right now I’m not really training to play football as much as I am doing exercises for the combine. It’s a lot different than what I do at Oregon. So the first workout goes from 8 and we do some movement stuff then work on linear stuff like 40s (yard dashes) and starts, or on Tuesday and Thursday we work the shuttle and the L drill. Directly after the running stuff we go right into the workout and that can be whatever – bench, and some of the lower body stuff. We kind of get a break from then until our next workout starts at 1. We usually just stay at the facility and we have a little lounge that we can eat our food in. Sometimes in the break we’ll have a lot of different other stuff that we have to do as far as media, sometimes we have a media company comes in and gives us an education, how to deal with the media. We do the Wonderlic test. The second workout on Monday, Wednesday, Friday is a little bit longer, and Tuesday, Thursday it’s a lot shorter in the afternoons. Saturdays we have a three-hour lift like from 7 to 10 a.m.
(Pressure) I think most people are just focused on the Combine right now. I wouldn’t say that we’re under a whole lot of pressure as much as we are clawing and getting as much work in before the Combine. Everybody’s packing the workouts in. It’s kind of a good thing that I’m down here. There’s no way I could get in this volume of work done if I were in Eugene. It’s complete focus, there’s zero distractions. (Unger will be in Eugene on March 12 for his pro timing day.)
(Draft day plans) I have no idea. I think we’ll be in Eugene, just sit at home and watch it. No draft parties.
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