Oklahoma OT Lane Johnson: Combine interview with Bengals was strange

Oklahoma offensive tackle Lane Johnson is one of the top draft prospects at his position, and he says his experience the past few days at the NFL Combine was good except for an odd interview with the Cincinnati Bengals.

During an interview with Darren Smith on The Mighty 1090 in San Diego, Johnson was asked if he was unprepared for any of his Combine interviews. He said no, but that the Bengals caught him off guard during his interview.

“I was meeting with Cincinnati, and I went in there and they told me to remember five things,” Johnson recalled to Smith. “They just listed like five things — a bear, a flower, a tree, a man and like a dog — and they told me to remember those terms at the end of the meeting to see if I could remember them. And from that point on, they listed numbers. They said, like, 9167, and told me to repeat them in reverse order. So that was probably the weirdest meeting I’ve ever been a part of and kind of caught me off guard.

“I would definitely say I was prepared except for that meeting,” said Johnson.

Johnson says he thinks he got about four out of five right when asked to recall the items.

“It was definitely challenging because it caught you off guard,” he said.

Though the Bengals’ instructions seem odd to the rest of us, they probably make sense in some sort of way. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s an interview tactic to see how well someone can multitask with their memory, which actually makes sense for a lineman. Think about it — being asked to remember a few items while being asked other questions isn’t too dissimilar from a lineman trying to remember blocking assignments for a given play while recalling tendencies they saw on film regarding their opponents.

Transcription via Sports Radio Interviews, H/T Eye on Football