Tank Carder 2012 NFL Draft Diary

Tank Carder 2012 NFL Draft Diary: Combine Training II

By Tank Carder, as told to Charlie Campbell - @draftcampbell

WalterFootball.com is proud to introduce our 2012 NFL Draft Diary with TCU linebacker Tank Carder. Throughout the draft process, Tank will be sharing his experience with the readers of WalterFootball.com. Tank will hit on the East-West Shrine Game experience, team interviews, the NFL Scouting Combine, his pro day, pre-draft visits, and of course, his draft day experience.

Carder was the Mountain West Conference Defensive Player of they Year the past two seasons. He also was the Rose Bowl Defensive MVP in TCU's win over Wisconsin at the end of the 2010 season.

Carder totaled 228 tackles with 25 tackles for a loss, 5.5 sacks, 19 passes broken up and four interceptions with three returned for touchdowns in his collegiate career. Carder is a hard-nosed football player who should have an interesting draft experience in 2012. WalterFootball.com would like to thank Tank Carder for his participation. We would also like to thank Tank's agent, Kelli Masters of KMM Sports, for helping to facilitate Tank's draft diary. Carder and Masters are readers of this Web site, so it was a natural fit to approach them about having Tank's draft diary here. We are thrilled to have Tank share his journey with all of you. Now, let's let Tank take over.

It is high time for the Combine. I'm ready to do get to work in Indy, and show all the staff in the NFL the kind of athlete I am. It has been six weeks of hard work getting ready for this interview I'm about to go into. The training went by real fast and it is time to perform. I trust that have all the tools, so I'm ready to go and anxious to get started.

I'm really excited about my 40 time, bench press, the shuttles and all the workouts. I don't want to talk myself up too much and make any bold predictions. We'll just see on Monday, but I'm real confident in the times I'm going to put down. I'm really excited to show what I can do. It is going to be a lot of fun. We've been training and working hard on my technique for running the 40, the shuttle and everything. I'm confident in what my times will be and I'm ready to blow it up.

Throughout the workouts my body has definitely gone through some big changes. We did my exit weight, body mass index and fat percentage. My final weight was 232 and I started out at 219. My fat percentage went from 12 percent to nine percent body fat. And I gained 18 pounds of muscle and lost five pounds of fat. It is crazy to think about it, but it is a real transformation. I know the interviews will be important. I'm pretty sure the interviews are going to be Friday, Saturday and Sunday night as far as formal interviews. There are also informal interviews every night. I practiced the wonderlic test. For the interviews with the coaches, I did some public speaking activities in front of the camera to get a feel for it. It is hard to prepare for because there is no way to precisely duplicate sitting with the top guys in the NFL with owners, general managers and head coaches. There is just no way to really fake that in preparation. You prepare for the worst and hope for the best. At this point I haven't set up any team visits yet, but hopefully that will come after the combine. I'm looking forward to getting to know the coaches and general managers better through these interviews.

Tank Carder - listed in Round 3 of our 2012 NFL Mock Draft.

There will be a lot of great athletes working out with me and there is one in particular I'm looking forward to watching: the linebacker from Texas Keenan Robinson. We played against each other in a Texas high school All-Star game. He was on the opposite team. I've always watched him play and it will be interesting to see him work out.

Keenan also works out with my running coach, who is from Velocity in Los Angeles in Orange County. It will be interesting for me to see how Keenan does at the Combine.

I'm disappointed that my East-West Shrine roommate Jerry Franklin won't be at the Combine. When we were rooming together I asked him if was going to be at the Combine and he said no. It's all right. Its just another step, but we all end up at the same place with an NFL team. Even if you don't go to the Combine. The Combine can help some guys a lot, but it is all just a part of a bigger process. Jerry has a lot of good tape, and I know he'll do well.

It will be fun to get this going and I'm excited to put some impressive times down.