Joe Rexrode

Detroit Free Press

INDIANAPOLIS – Even in the informal, get-to-know-you sessions surrounding the NFL combine, a coach can use game film to get a feel for a prospect’s aptitude.

Buffalo Bills receivers coach Sanjay Lal, for example, got out his iPad on Wednesday night in a session with Aaron Burbridge and started quizzing him on coverages.

“I was answering all of them correct,” Burbridge said Thursday at Lucas Oil Stadium, site of the combine. “He was surprised.”

The former Michigan State receiver is finding that his apprenticeship in the Spartans’ pro-style offense is paying off as he gets to know the people who will consider drafting him.

“A lot of the coaches that I met with last night, they told us coach (Mark Dantonio) and his staff gets a lot of Michigan State guys ready, league-ready,” said Burbridge, the 2015 Big Ten Receiver of the Year. “And I was answering a lot of questions they didn’t expect me to answer or know.”

Burbridge has formal interviews scheduled with the Los Angeles Rams and Arizona Cardinals, and he is projected to go somewhere in the range of Rounds 2-4 in the April 28-30 draft. Draft analyst Jon Ledyard wrote for USA TODAY that Burbridge has “tremendous concentration and body control” to go with “advanced” route knowledge, but that he’s “certainly not a burner.”

Burbridge is hoping to run the 40 in the 4.5-second range, and that teams see his senior season outburst — 85 catches for 1,258 yards, after he had 80 for 916 in his first three seasons — as the new normal rather than an aberration.

“I feel like I’m NFL-ready,” he said.

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Contact Joe Rexrode: jrexrode@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @joerexrode. Check out his MSU blog at freep.com/heyjoe. Download our Spartans Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!