Clayborn in final sprint to NFL draft

Adrian Clayborn was born in 1988. He is a child of the cell phone/GPS/“can't get lost if they parachuted out of an airplane into the middle of a forest” age.

If the all-American defensive end didn't have a cell phone with a GPS device before he was in high school in St. Louis, Mo., he certainly had one when he graduated from the University of Iowa in December.

Clayborn is in the final sprint to the first round of the NFL draft. This is when teams get serious, even if that means, sometimes, a silly question or two to see how a prospective pick thinks on his feet.

“One team asked me a lot of questions,” Clayborn said in an interview this week. “One sort of stuck with me. If I were lost in the woods, how would I get out? It kind of threw me off guard, because no team started the interview off like that. So, it threw me off a little, I guess, but it was kind of funny.”

Why do teams do that?

“Just to get a reaction out of you,” Clayborn said. “The interview process was fun for me. It gives you a chance to show your personality and show teams you're comfortable in an interview setting and talking to general managers and owners.”

Clayborn is a child of the cell phone/GPS age, but he didn't give that obvious answer.

“I told them I'd look for the nearest road,” Clayborn said. “Then, he asked how I'd do that? I said I'd listen for sounds. I don't think he wanted a complex answer, but that was what popped in my head.”

These are million-dollar questions. The millions are up in the air with the league's labor strike and looming lockout casting a pall over the NFL after the draft.

ESPN draftniks Mel Kiper and Todd McShay have Clayborn going between 24 and 27, where picks signed contracts in the $11 to $13 million range last year (about $8 million in guaranteed money).

The NFL Network's Mike Mayock has a list of who he believes are the top 32 players in the draft. He is adamant that it's not a mock draft, but he has Clayborn listed at No. 22 with the following statement that kind of says it all about Clayborn from the start of the 2010 season to now:

“Interesting guy,” Mayock writes. “After his junior year, most would have called him a top-10 to top-15 pick. All that stuff about Erb's Palsy and will it affect his draft stock, I say watch the tape. He's a football player. [Wisconsin OT] Gabe Carimi got the better of him this year, but I though he dominated Carimi a year ago. If he goes in the low 20s, what a great football player you're going to get.”

Clayborn, who finished his Iowa career with 37.5 tackles for loss and 19 sacks, has spent the last three months in Scottsdale, Ariz., training for the NFL combine and Iowa's pro day today.