NFL Combine: Scherff, Johnson overcame emotional lowpoints to make it to the combine

INDIANAPOLIS - For a moment, Brandon Scherff thought his season was over.

The Iowa lineman struggled off the turf at Kinnick Stadium on Sept. 9, unable to bend his right knee and fearing the worst.

'Oh, boy,” he thought. 'Here we go again.”

But unlike the 2012 season, when he broke his leg against Penn State, Scherff did not miss the rest of the year. In fact, he didn't even miss the second half of that early September win against Ball State.

On the Monday after the game, he underwent an MRI that concluded he had torn his right meniscus. On Tuesday, he had the knee scoped. Doctors advised him to sit out for at least two weeks before practicing again.

That didn't happen.

'I owed something to my team,” he said during Thursday's media session at the NFL Scouting Combine. 'If I was able to play, I was going to play. They said two weeks or three weeks possibly. I said I felt pretty good on Wednesday, could I just throw my knee braces on and helmet and just do some drills? Thursday, I said I felt fine, and they said it was up to me.”

So Scherff played against Iowa State that week, and didn't miss a single game en route to earning first-team All-America honors and the Outland Trophy.

'He's a blue-collar, hard-working guy,” teammate Andrew Donnal, who's also at the Combine, said. 'He puts in the extra work in the film room. Takes care of his body. Eats right. All of the little things. That sets him apart from people.”

The 6-foot-5, 320-pound offensive lineman has an impressive athletic background. He played five sports at Dennison High School, where he was best known for being the state's largest quarterback.

'It was different,” he said. 'I was 290 pounds, and my center was like 190 pounds.”

He even made the No. 4 spot on the school's varsity tennis team, where he counted on finesse more than power.

'I tried to spin it,” he said, setting off a round of laughter in the press room. 'They'd never expect it.”

Scherff is widely expected to be a first-round pick, likely somewhere near the top 10.

All three of CBS Sports' current mock drafts have Scherff going in the top half of the first round, with one of them predicting he will go No. 5 to the Washington Redskins.

The born-and-raised Iowan has already accepted the idea of life outside the Hawkeye State.

'I'll be happy wherever I go,” he said. 'Small-town guy in a big city. That's perfect.”

David Johnson

Clinton native and Northern Iowa running back David Johnson never planned on being a Panther.

'I was more of a Hawkeye,” he said on Thursday. 'They were talking about a preferred grayshirt, but at the time coming out of high school, I didn't know what that was. It felt like they weren't really interested in me, so I didn't want to go that way.”

Grayshirting is a process that allows Division I teams to delay scholarships until the semester after an athlete enrolls. But the message to Johnson was clear: You're not good enough.

So he made it a point to prove Iowa and Iowa State - who also passed on him - wrong whenever Northern Iowa played the FBS schools.

'Oh yeah,” he said. 'I was a little more motivated playing those teams, especially, trying to prove to them that they lost a good running back and a good player. The week before those games was always intense.

'Not just me, the whole team was more intense. Everyone was getting after it.”

Johnson, known for his receiving ability, caught five passes for 203 yards and a touchdown against the Hawkeyes this past season.

The 6-foot-2 prospect said he models his game after Chicago Bears running back Matt Forte.

'He's not as tall as me, but his ability to catch out the backfield is excellent,” Johnson said. 'That's where I try to watch and see how he does it.”

His time at the Senior Bowl last month helped assuage fears that his competition level in the Missouri Valley Conference would hold him back.

'It helped out a lot, because a lot of coaches were kinda worried about the level of competition I played against at FCS level,” he said. 'Coming to the Senior Bowl and seeing how I would do against those guys, especially in practice on the 1-on-1s, I feel like I did do a good job.”

CBS Sports currently ranks Johnson as the 10th-best running back in the class, and the No. 93 player overall.