Just like a potential boss, NFL coaches and executives like to interview their candidates -- sometimes the interview does not take a traditional route.
It is not uncommon to ask trick questions or attempt to test a person's communication skills under pressure. For some coaches that is too boring and they resort to questions that are downright weird.
Sam Gardner of Fox Sports gathered interesting questions asked to 18 players at today's combine. Here are some of the best gathered:
"The weirdest one I've ever gotten is, 'Are you a cat or are you a dog?,'" said Jamaal Williams (BYU, RB). "Of course you want to be a dog, so you've got some feistiness in you. I'd like to hear what people would say if they're a cat, but I'm not sure what a compliment would be for a cat. If you're a cat and you get blown up on a play, do you get back up and you've got eight lives now?"
Sometimes a tactic of distraction is put in motion.
"I had a Coach draw up a play for me, then he turned the paper over and started talking to me about just random stuff, trying to get my mind off what we just did," said Sam Rogers (Virginia Tech, FB). "Then he said, 'All right, now I want you to draw that play up again.'"
Other times they just want to know what type of beverage you prefer.
"Someone asked me what kind of alcohol I like to drink," said Corey Levin (Tennessee-Chattanooga, OG). "And when I told him that I hadn't been drinking leading up to the Combine, they were like, "Well, what did you drink before that?" They wouldn’t let me not answer. So that was probably one of the weirder questions I got."
Jon Toth, a center from Kentucky had an interesting dialogue with a coach from the Cardinals on colors: "I think it was the Cardinals coach who started off by asking me, 'What color is chocolate?' 'Brown.' And then he was like, 'What color is melted chocolate,' and I think I said dark brown, and he said, 'No, don’t overthink it.' 'So I said brown.' Then he said, 'What color is butter?; then, 'What color is melted butter?' 'Yellow.' 'What color is snow?' 'White.' 'What color is melted snow?' I said, 'White.' And then he said, 'Nope, melted snow is clear, so what does that make snow?' I was like, 'Clear,' he said, 'Yep,' and that was kind of the ice-breaker."
And you have the very strange ones – or inappropriate. That is up for debate.
From Erik Austell, an offensive tackle from Charleston Southern: "I have not, but one guy was getting interviewed — I don’t know if you can include this — and he was like, "So they’re talking football, and then randomly, he just said, 'Bras or panties?' " Like, what?
Finally, you circle back to cats and dogs with offensive tackle David Sharpe from Florida: "Would you rather be a cat or a dog?" is the worst one I’ve gotten. I said the dog, of course. I’d rather be the hunter than the hunted. Everybody would rather be a dog than a cat."