Scouts and coaches and front office personnel congregate by team, guarding their state secrets. "We're evaluators, but we're human beings," says Rams scout Danton Barto. "We root for human beings, and I root for Teddy." That's as specific, as real, as anyone will get.

Everything else about Teddy Bridgewater seems open for debate. He ran only one 40. Does he like to compete? He weighed 6 pounds less than the 214 he weighed at the combine. Is he too frail to stand up to NFL punishment? His hands are smaller than Johnny Manziel's and Blake Bortles'. Are they too small for the position? Nobody seems to care that these are the same hands that completed 71 percent of passes in his final season at Louisville, the same hands that led Louisville to a Sugar Bowl win over Florida his sophomore season, the same hands that put him in the discussion as the top overall pick before all the noise began to swirl around him.

How can one day mean so much? He's out there with no pads, no helmet, no defense to read, no fans in the stands, no team to lead, no game to win. After three years of thinking on his feet, making plays, throwing for 72 scores and nearly 10,000 yards, will he be defined by 40 minutes in a sanitized environment?

"I'm living in the now," Bridgewater says afterward. "That's how I approach it -- controlling the environment and what you can control. One day you're talked about, and the next day you can be forgotten. I can't control that."

The credentialed men know the history. They know Bridgewater has been judged before; they know he's overcome adversity. It's the history of a lot of young men in their world. But what they may not know is how seldom he hears the outside noise, or how high he's built the walls that surround him, or that he trusts one voice above all else -- the one within himself.

REMEMBER THE MOWER, Teddy, and you'll remember what it's like to feel confused and frustrated and powerless. You should have been in school -- everyone thought you were in school -- but instead you stood above that mower in the Miami heat, ready to pull the cord and run it across another stranger's Liberty City lawn, proving it's possible to be brave and dumb and scared all at the same time.

You were a freshman in high school, 14 years old, too young for the kind of news Mom announced to you and your three siblings in the living room two months earlier: "I have breast cancer," she said. With your dad only an occasional presence in your life, Mom was the magnetic pull that kept the family together. After you heard "cancer," the rest was pretty much a blur. There were tears, anger, defiance. The world stopped for a few minutes, then began to spin wildly, as if to catch up.

Your heart raced ahead of your brain. You decided you needed to be the man of the house, to take care of Mom by heading out into the neighborhood to mow lawns and wash cars. The good intentions made it slightly easier when Mom found out.

The notice from Miami Northwestern High School arrived in the mail -- 66 tardies. This did not go over well. You thought it was OK to miss art class to make extra money for her. You thought it might be a good idea to quit football to be home in the afternoons to help her through her chemotherapy treatments.

She had other ideas. You can still hear her words and see the look on her face. Countless times since, coaches have stood before you thinking they had the right message to inspire and motivate. You heard them through the humid stink of locker rooms and during dreary midweek practices. As hard as they tried, they never came close to finding that spot Mom found when she learned of the 66 tardies.

"I'm going to beat this thing," she said. "And we are going to get through this. If I don't quit, Theodore, you can't quit. If I can't give up, you can't give up."

Those words hung in the air of your house like a clenched fist. They seeped into your consciousness and stuck. That stormy look in her eyes sent you back to school and kept you on the field. Those words changed your life for one reason: You did more than hear them -- you listened.

You still have them tucked away, Teddy, for times like these, to block out the noise.

THE COLLEGE COACHES who came to Liberty City to recruit the ninth-rated quarterback in the 2011 class were given a detailed outline of Bridgewater's immediate future, by Teddy himself: He would graduate from high school in December and enroll early to take part in spring practice; he would start as an 18-year-old true freshman; he would go to a BCS game his sophomore year; he would be in the Heisman race as a junior; he would graduate from college early -- becoming the first in his family to earn a degree -- and enter the NFL after three seasons.

Bridgewater would repeat the plan in a matter-of-fact tone for every coach, as if reading from a grocery list. None of them expressed shock at either the specificity or the confidence. "It's all in the delivery," Bridgewater says. "Some of them liked it, because that's what you want out of a quarterback." Miami's Randy Shannon earned his trust and commitment, but when Shannon was fired after Bridgewater's senior season, Teddy looked elsewhere. A year earlier, Louisville had hired Charlie Strong, a former Florida assistant, and the promise of short-term permanence -- about the only kind that exists in college football anymore -- won him over.

Strong employed a pro-style offense, and Bridgewater fulfilled all those promises he made: started as a true freshman, beat Florida in the Sugar Bowl as a sophomore, was mentioned in the Heisman discussion as a junior and graduated in less than three years with a degree in sports management. Of the record 102 early entrants in the 2014 draft, Bridgewater is one of only four with a degree.

"That is why he is the person he is and the player he is," Strong says. "He knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish. He saw what his mom went through, and he wanted to plan out his life so he doesn't have any bumps in the road."

Fittingly, Bridgewater also became known for comebacks at Louisville. Four times during that Sugar Bowl season, he carried the Cardinals to come-from-behind wins. Last year, in his final regular-season game, he threw for two fourth-quarter scores and beat Cincinnati in overtime. "My life story comes into play with my decision-making, my determination," says Bridgewater. "Even when my mom was going through breast cancer, I had to make a decision -- whether I was going to give up and live in misery because of what she was going through or live my life with a purpose and allow her to live through me."

And now his mom, Rose Murphy, cancer-free for four years and remarried, says, "It gave me strength to watch him play." She was never more inspired than when he beat Rutgers his sophomore year with a broken left wrist and badly sprained right ankle, throwing for 263 yards and two touchdowns to secure an eventual BCS bid. He showed up to the postgame news conference wearing a cast on his arm and a boot on his foot. That's the kind of performance that reportedly once made offensive coordinator Shawn Watson tearfully call him "one of the five best people in my life."

Bridgewater would tell struggling teammates, "Blessings are never denied, but they may be delayed," because it always helped when his mom said it to him. He would conclude by patting his teammate on the helmet and saying, "Your time is going to come."

He led Louisville to a 23-3 record his final two seasons. Bridgewater's performance took him to the top of draft boards (temporarily) and sent Strong to Texas, the first black head coach in school history. When reached at his big office in Austin, Strong is told that Bridgewater repeatedly gives the coach credit for his being on the cusp of the NFL. "Yeah?" Strong says with a quick laugh that borders on incredulous. "Look where Teddy got me."

STANDING OVER THAT mower, you were feeling determined, confused and more than a little pissed off. Your worldview didn't reach beyond Liberty City: Mom, cancer, fear. What chance does a talking head's opinion of your pro day have against that? The key then is the key now: Channel it, Teddy, and make it work for you.