INDIANAPOLIS -- Da'Ron Payne entered this week's NFL Scouting Combine as the latest defensive tackle prospect from Alabama who stuffs the run and shows the athleticism to do things his body type shouldn't allow.

He learned from A'Shawn Robinson and Bo Davis.

Those two were his mentors during a freshman season in 2015 in which he merely added depth on the way to a national championship. Robinson showed him the way as the cog in the line of the nation's best run defense. Davis coached them both with a jacked-up, in-your-face style.

Davis was just hired to coach Robinson and the rest of the Lions defensive line on Matt Patricia's first staff. In the process, Detroit is creating a pipeline from Nick Saban's Alabama lines to the ones the Lions want to use. And that'll lead them right to the feet of a prospect like Payne.

He's 6 feet 2 inches and 311 pounds with a 4.95-second 40-yard dash time and the kind of quickness it takes to blow up a running game like Georgia's in the College Football National Championship Game. He's the type of versatile big body the Lions might like for what Patricia has described as a hybrid defense.

"I wouldn't mind going up there with (Davis) and A'Shawn Robinson, be out there and be like back in the day," Payne said.

Payne learned from watching Robinson, who was the starter on that 2015 national championship team. He said Robinson was harder on the other defensive linemen, partly because they weren't as far along. That jives with what Michigan State center Brian Allen said about his memory of playing Alabama in a playoff game that year, when he said Payne came in and was better than the starters.

Payne's draft prospects currently appear better than Robinson's were back when he slid to the second round. Payne is projected for the first round, and after his strong combine, it's in question whether he'll be available when the Lions pick at 20.

It's something the parties are paying some interest to as the Lions showed up to the Indiana Convention Center this week to scout a wide range of players. Payne ran into Davis early on and chatted him up, feeling like it was old times back when Davis was the coach who recruited him to Alabama and then raised him with tough love on the defensive line.

"Oh, Coach Bo, he's gonna get you right," Payne said. "He's gonna make sure you mess up, you're gonna know that you messed up. He's gonna coach you hard and he's gonna love you hard, too."

Davis coached two stints at Alabama, from 2007-2010 and 2014-2015. In the latter stint, he helped develop Robinson and Payne as well as Da'Shawn Hand and Joshua Frazier, who are also prospects in this year's draft. He worked last year at Texas-San Antonio with Marcus Davenport, the defensive end who is widely considered a first-round pick.

He wound up at UTSA after bouncing around due to a ban on off-campus recruiting he received while working with those linemen at Alabama. The punishment doesn't affect his work in the pros, though, and he'll be tasked with getting the most out of Detroit's defensive line.

That includes Robinson, and it could potentially include Payne or Hand or Frazier, depending on how the draft shakes out and what Detroit decides to do at a position of clear need now that Haloti Ngata is a free agent. Hand is considered a Day 2 pick, and Frazier is hoping to be selected.

With the way Payne has ascended since the playoff run, where he also had an interception return and a touchdown catch against Clemson, plenty of teams will have high interest.

Only one of them has the coach who recruited him to Alabama in the first place.

"I love Coach Bo," Payne said. "He taught me a bunch of things coming out of high school. I didn't know much, but I think he got me to where I'm at now.