It’s no secret that NFL prospects get asked some truly bizarre questions by teams in the months leading up to the draft. But the question that Ohio State linebacker Jerome Baker was asked might be the strangest of all. In an interview with Justin Melo of Draft Wire, Baker said he was asked what he would do if punched in the face in the middle of the interview. When presented with this hypothetical scenario, Baker decided not to go full O.J. Simpson by laying out an entire breakdown of how such a confrontation would unfold. Instead, he simply stated that the obvious—they would end up fighting.
"The one question that sticks out is I sat down, and the first thing the coach asked me is what I would do if he punched me in the face right now?” Baker recalls. “To me, being from Cleveland, my natural reaction was, ‘Coach, no disrespect but if you punch me in the face, we’re gonna fight right here.’ That was just my natural response. I guess that’s what he wanted to hear, because he said, ‘Good.’ It was definitely a fun interview. I didn’t get asked too many weird questions.”
Last month, LSU running back Dennis Guice revealed on SiriusXM that one team at the NFL Combine asked him if he liked men. "I go in one room, and a team will ask me do I like men, just to see my reaction," Guice said. "I go in another room, they’ll try to bring up one of my family members or something and tell me, ‘Hey, I heard your mom sells herself. How do you feel about that?’"
Teams want to get into the head of certain prospects to see how they would handle adversity or uncomfortable situations. It's a weird, and sometimes invasive way of conducting business, but apparently drastic measures need to be taken when you're about to invest millions of dollars into a player.
