Howard Cornerback Pope Takes Fast Lane to the Draft

Most prospects work with Smith for six weeks; Pope, who flew to Atlanta just three days after finishing his finals, stayed for three months. Smith said that in 17 years of training draft prospects, he had never had a player stay as long or work as hard as Pope did.

"We joked that we were going to name our inside running area 'Geoff Pope Hall' because he spent more time in there than anybody else," Smith said.

Pope's main goal was to add muscle while maintaining his speed; he weighed 181 pounds when Howard's season ended. Many of the players who worked alongside him in Atlanta were getting ready for the late February combine, but Pope -- unlike Bartell and Bethea in previous years -- wasn't invited. Instead, he watched it on television while sitting in Smith's office.

"It was tough sitting back in the training facility and watching those guys, and we're looking at them and they're running what I call 'forevers,' which is a bad 40 time," Pope said. "I said I could do that right now, with no training! It was hard. I worked out, I watched the combine that morning, and then I worked out again because it made me so angry."

Since Pope didn't go to the combine, he focused all his energy on preparing for his first pro day -- and in particular, for that 40-yard dash. Smith said that out of the more than 600 NFL players he has trained, only five had run a sub-4.3 before Pope, who now joins a list that includes Denver cornerback Champ Bailey, San Francisco wide receiver Ashley Lelie and Dallas cornerback Terence Newman.

"Everything depended on how fast I was going to run," said Pope, who, as a freshman at Eastern Michigan, placed fourth in the 60-meter dash (6.78) at the Mid-American Conference indoor track championships. "It's a lot of pressure."

Pope and his representatives have been told that he has a mid-round grade, but he realizes that he could just as easily end up undrafted. Two mock drafts illustrate how capricious the business can be: FoxSports.com predicts that the New Orleans Saints will take Pope in the fourth round with the 123rd overall pick, while ESPN.com doesn't have Pope being selected at all.

So this weekend will be nerve-racking for Pope. His mother, Elaine, will host friends and family in Detroit on both Saturday and Sunday, but he doesn't plan on joining them. "They're going to tear the house down, whether I'm there or not," he said.

Instead, he will stay in the D.C. area -- "this is where I put the work in" -- and spend the weekend with either Sillah or Wiestling. Pope has instructed his friends not to call him, or at least not before Sunday night -- he needs to keep his cellphone line open, just in case an NFL team is trying to reach him.

"No matter where I go as far as the draft or what team, I've got my own expectations. I'm going to work hard," Pope said. "Just to get drafted as high as possible would be great, especially coming from a small school, and being the third defensive back from Howard would be pretty big. But any round would be a success to me."