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IOWA CITY, Iowa — Inside the University of Iowa's Hansen Football Performance Center—a brand-new, lavish facility next to Kinnick Stadium on the west side of campus—offensive line coach Brian Ferentz pulled up a play from a Hawkeyes bowl-prep practice in late December and let the film roll.

Watching the play unfold from the end-zone camera, left tackle Brandon Scherff stood out. Massive with a 6'5", 319-pound frame, he showed good footwork in creating an angle to the second level of the defense, swallowed up a linebacker and started driving the kid across the screen.

Five yards. Ten yards. Fifteen yards. Twenty yards.

He kept going—legs moving, hands inside, power overwhelming from the point of attack. He would have blocked this guy all the way to Cedar Rapids if the wall at the indoor facility, 15 yards out of bounds, hadn't gotten in the way.

Whoa.

"I was trying to torque him and throw him on the ground, but the wall happened first," Scherff said of the video. "I just wanted to finish it. Get a little spark going. Wanted to piss somebody off."

Talking with coaches in the building, this is who Scherff is. This is what he does, and it's just one of many examples of the ability and the rigorous football-first mentality that have him projected by many, including Bleacher Report's Matt Miller, to be a top-10 pick in the upcoming NFL draft.

Whether it was a lifting session during winter conditioning, a spring ball practice, the fourth quarter of a Big Ten game or a bowl-prep session in shorts, shoulder pads and a helmet, Scherff was going to try to destroy anyone who got in his way.

"He was going to set the tempo. That's the thing about him," Brian Ferentz said after he turned off the film. "When it's time to compete, the dude competes…he competes."

Scherff filled the doorframe when I met him in an office next to Iowa's warehouse-sized weight room, a facility loaded with brand-new Olympic platforms, a nutrition and recovery station and enough dumbbells to train an army.

With his trimmed beard and hands that resembled two oversized baseball gloves, Scherff spoke confidently, but he was also extremely humble and beholden to coach Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa program that helped him transform into an Outland Trophy winner.

"Wouldn't have happened without the coaching staff and all my teammates that have kicked my ass during practices," Scherff said. "I came in my freshman year and had to go against [Adrian] Clayborn, [Karl] Klug, [Christian] Ballard, [Broderick] Binns and Mike Daniels. That kind of set the tone right there. You learn real fast what this game's about."

This isn't a guy worried about his brand, marketing value or draft stock. Sponsorships? Shoe deals? Headlines and press clippings? Forget about it. Those aren't the things that drive him.

"His priority in life is being a good football player," Brian Ferentz said. "He recognizes it's a short window, he recognizes he has a natural gift to do it, so that's what he prioritizes, that's what he makes important. And it shows up."

Scherff will be in attendance for the first round of the NFL draft in Chicago on April 30—along with his family, girlfriend Jenni, Kirk and Brian Ferentz, Iowa strength coach Chris Doyle and some of his high school coaches—but his preference would have been to host a low-key draft party back in Denison, Iowa.

Scherff hasn't forgotten where he came from since graduating from high school as a star in football, basketball, baseball, track and field (shot put) and even on the tennis court. He hunts and fishes in his time away from the field and doesn't get caught up in the hype.

"To this day, he's still keeping it simple," head coach Kirk Ferentz said. "He's unspoiled—a nuts-and-bolts guy."

This is rare in today's landscape, with so many top prospects focused on the money and fame on the horizon.

But Scherff is more of an old-school mountain man. This is a guy who used to work on a Christmas tree farm in Denison. He would start in the cold on Black Friday and chop down trees for customers before throwing them in the back of trucks. In the summer? That's when Scherff would take a machete and prune the trees to get them ready for the following season.

Instead of traveling to one of the top-tier workout facilities in Arizona or Florida that house a majority of the projected first-round prospects as they prep for the draft, Scherff decided to stay in Iowa City and train with Doyle, the gatekeeper of the Hawkeyes weight room.

"You got all the things you need right here. Brand-new facility, top strength coach in the nation. He's known you for five years," Scherff said. "There's no point going somewhere else where they have to figure out your strengths and weakness—which can take a week or two weeks—when you can come right here and operate under a program that Doyle has planned for you for the past five years."

When Scherff first reported to Iowa back in 2010, he was one of only two players in the past 15 years under Kirk Ferentz who weighed more than 300 pounds, tipping the scale at 324. That's when Doyle and the strength staff went to work, putting Scherff on a nutrition and workout plan to get his weight down before building him back up.

"I dropped 24 pounds that summer," Scherff said. "Started my freshman year off at college at 300, then 305, 315 and 320."

Doyle said Scherff completely changed his body composition, moving past the routine of eating what was right in front of him or what was on the menu. He followed in the footsteps of former Hawkeye and current Baltimore Ravens Pro Bowl guard Marshal Yanda with his diet.

Yanda, who is extremely disciplined in what he eats, works out with Scherff in Iowa City and has been a major influence on his development.

Scherff's ability to recover quickly has allowed him to compete with the best in the country while turning out ridiculous lifting numbers in the weight room that speak to his functional power.

Scherff's current max on the squat is 655 pounds, and he did his first 400-pound hang clean during his sophomore year. But the number that stands out is the 443-pound hang clean that created a lighting storm of buzz on social media:

The core strength and speed needed to generate the force to move that kind of weight is unheard of in football circles.

"Doing that 443 hang clean, I never once imagined I could do that three times," Scherff said. "I didn't even imagine I could do it once. Coach Doyle said, 'You can do it. Just try to get one out,' and three popped out."

Scherff posted a 5.05-second 40-yard dash at the scouting combine in Indianapolis but didn't finish drills due to a hamstring injury. At Iowa's pro day last month, he put on a show, with an electric 7.18-second three-cone drill and a 4.57-second short shuttle, per NFL.com. That's moving for a 319-pounder, and it looked effortless.

The translation here with the size, strength and athleticism? Scherff is a straight freak. But the Iowa coaches—and Scherff's former teammates—will tell you that it starts with his football character. That's what makes him a true star in this game.

"Obviously you can't ignore his physical gifts. He's a 300-pound-plus guy. He's got a huge frame on him. To an extent, his athleticism was gifted as well," Doyle said. "But to me, it's his mentality that separates him from everyone else.

"There's a bunch of big, strong guys out there. There's a bunch of athletic guys out there. But not everybody plays at the level Brandon Scherff plays. And I believe it starts in the way he thinks."

Former Hawkeye and current Cleveland Browns linebacker Christian Kirksey said Scherff treated every practice like a game day and forced others to match his intensity on the field. Iowa defensive lineman Louis Trinca-Pasat pointed to Scherff's "football IQ." And running back Mark Weisman said, "You can trust him on every play. That's almost as important as being such a physical freak as he is."

Yes, Scherff is an athletic freak, but his ability is rooted in his mental capacity as an athlete.

"Of all the great players that we've had here, the commonality is the way they think. The commonality is the attitude and the pride they take in what they do," Kirk Ferentz said. "He's right there on all that stuff. And then he has an unusual skill set on top of that. There aren't many guys with his size and athleticism. You combine all those things together."

Ferentz and Doyle have developed an all-star cast of offensive linemen at Iowa, from Robert Gallery to Eric Steinbach to Bruce Nelson to Yanda to Bryan Bulaga to Riley Reiff. The list goes on. It has become an offensive-line factory of sorts, and like those names listed, Scherff learned to play with a certain style and attitude that stands out in the building and on tape.

"He stands on the shoulders of the teammates that have come before him. Standing on the shoulders of Bulaga and Reiff. He's learned it. He's added to it. But he absolutely exemplifies in every way what we want our guys to be like," Doyle said. "You talk about tough, smart, physical. You talk about humble, never forget where you came from. And hungry to go out and prove something. That's him.

"Watch him play. He is going to make sure when he walks off the field that the guy he played against knows who was is in charge."

Scherff injured his knee during Iowa's Week 2 win over Ball State this past season. He had to be helped off the field but came back to play the entire second half.

The day after the game, he experienced some stiffness, and the coaches held him out of conditioning work. Come Monday, the team scheduled an MRI exam, and the results arrived that evening: a torn meniscus that would require surgery.

The doctors said there would be two to three weeks of recovery and scheduled the procedure for Tuesday. It was time for him to sit.

But Scherff didn't see it that way. Sure, he had the surgery, but he wasn't about to shut it down for a couple of weeks and miss time on the field. On Tuesday evening, Scherff walked into the Iowa football facility carrying his crutches and told the coaches he would be playing that week.

"He comes in the office and says, 'I'm going to play on Saturday,'" Brian Ferentz said. "Alright, let me walk you down, put you in the car before we make your mother cry talking about playing on Saturday."

After getting treatment on Tuesday night, Scherff woke up feeling good and asked Doyle if he could grab his helmet and knee braces and come out to the field to work. Brian Ferentz said he looked OK doing drill work on Wednesday, but the Thursday practice would be the deciding factor if he was going to see the field on Saturday against Iowa State.

Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

"I guess what I was hoping for, to be honest with you, is that he wouldn't be able to finish practice. Would have been really easy to tell him at that point, 'You can't play,'" Brian Ferentz said. "But he killed practice. He looked normal, nothing different except a little bandage under his brace."

Scherff played the entire game against Iowa State. And the real question is how many players, heck, how many projected top-10 picks, would have risked their draft stock and their future to play in that situation? Most guys would have shut it down, taken a seat and put the NFL first."

But not Scherff, not this guy. He went out there and competed.

"I've never seen anything like it. I'll probably never see anything like it again," Brian Ferentz said. "He had everything to lose, almost nothing to gain."

Why do it? Why not think about the first-round money, the negative scouting grade that could come from a game where he wasn't even close to 100 percent? I'm telling you, that's rare, I mean really rare with the top guys in the draft.

Take a game off, maybe two, and heal up. Take care of the injury, put the team second and the individual first. That would be the natural progression for a first-round player who is looking at a nice signing bonus in pro football.

Scherff told me he was just "hurt," not injured. He was able to play, and he wanted to play. He didn't take pain meds throughout the week. He just went out there and played ball, like nothing was wrong. He put the team first.

"This is what makes him special. You are talking about a guy that has every reason not to go out there," Brian Ferentz said. "It wasn't about him, it was about not letting his teammates down."

That's also why Scherff decided to come back for his senior season, according to Kirk Ferentz. He had an opportunity to leave after his junior year, but he loved the college game, was serious about his craft and wanted to play another year at Iowa.

"That's how he's wired. To me, [it's] as big a value as the way he blocks and the production he'll give you on the field," Kirk Ferentz said. "The way he thinks, the way he does things—that to me is as good an illustration as you'll find in his career."

Tackle or guard?

That is the No. 1 discussion point with scouts and NFL personnel I've spoken to about Scherff. Where does he project, and how will it impact his overall grade if he has to slide inside at the pro level?

After playing guard as a redshirt freshman, Scherff has played left tackle the past three seasons, but some question his ability to consistently handle NFL speed in pass protection at that position. That could mean moving to right tackle or back to guard.

At guard, you know what you are going to get. Scherff will be a road grader in the run game, a true mauler as an interior player with excellent footwork, technique and the size to handle defensive tackles at the point of attack. He is physical, nasty on the finish and brings the type of athleticism to the field that allows him to match linebackers at the second level.

I asked Scherff about possibly moving inside to play guard, and he didn't flinch. No pause, no second thought, nothing.

"I don't care. I just want to play," Scherff said. "It's been a dream of mine to play in the NFL. Going to be excited wherever and just go out and play."

Phil Sears-USA TODAY Sports

Brian Ferentz compared Scherff to Yanda because of the versatility both former Hawkeyes bring on game days. Yanda is a Pro Bowler at guard, a top-tier player in the NFL. But he can also bump outside and produce playing tackle. There won't be a drop-off, and he can handle the edge.

Ferentz sees a similar situation with Scherff, who has more natural ability and athleticism, when he makes the jump to the NFL.

"What do you need? Let him play there," Brian Ferentz said. "If you are a franchise that doesn't have a strong culture, he can help you build one. If you already have one, he'll reinforce it. He'll walk right in the door and be whatever you're looking for."

The scouts know it, too. The tape from his senior year isn't as good as the tape from his junior year, before the knee injury, but Scherff could be an anchor on the offensive line for the next eight to 10 years. He has that type of talent. And he isn't a finished product. Scherff can continue to develop in the NFL and grow as a player.

"Unfortunately, he won't get to us. He would be our pick," said one NFL executive whose team is drafting in the second half of the first round. "He is exactly what we need in terms of his football character and temperament."

The NFL is tough on rookies and can be extremely challenging for top picks. Veterans target them early in camp. They want to see production, professionalism and the ability to handle some adversity, and they are always watching. Can the kid handle the show? Can he prove his value on the field?

Scherff's mentality and attitude should make those easy questions to answer.

"He's ready to walk into an environment like that," Brian Ferentz said. "Now it's a livelihood. Now it's a profession. Now it's serious business. He'll be respected within two snaps of a practice because of how he operates."

Before I wrapped up my day with Scherff and his coaches, I asked Doyle to give me one word that describes Scherff.

He paused for a second or two, then said, "Tenacious."

"In everything…the way he approaches hunting and fishing, the way he approaches the weight room, the way he attacks an opponent, the way he goes and watches tape.

"He is intent to do the job."

Seven-year NFL veteran Matt Bowen is an NFL National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report.

Follow @MattBowen41