The NFL converges on Indianapolis this week for the scouting combine, and the calendar caught Ryan Rehkow looking.

"It's like, holy cow, that was only a year ago," says Rehkow, who went from wearing the 2024 combine's anonymous No. 4 punter jersey to the Bengals’ Special Teams Player of the Year.

No. 4 punter went from the combine. To undrafted. To signed by the world champions. To waived before training camp. To a three-man training camp punting derby with the Bengals. To setting NFL records in his debut on Opening Day. To breaking team records for gross and net punting average. To last week’s two-year contract.

"That feels like a lifetime ago, and it also feels like yesterday," Rehkow said.

His boss, Bengals special teams coordinator Darrin Simmons, can't help but agree. It's not lost on Simmons that the Heisman Trophy winner at this year's combine, Colorado two-way wunderkind Travis Hunter, was born in 2003. That's the first year he came to the combine with the Bengals and also began running the event's punting drills.

"Trust me, I feel that. I feel it on a daily basis," Simmons says. "That's a positive for me. It's just a completely different landscape with the way that the college rules have changed."

It's not only not your father's combine anymore. It's not even the combine of Rehkow's brother. Austin Rehkow came to Indy in 2017 after kicking for four years at Idaho, and about the only thing that's the same is Simmons mapping the drills with his Kansas farmer's weathered eye.

Rehkow stowed it in the back of his mind as one of his combine takeaways. That dude Simmons could really run a workout.

"That was my first experience interacting with Darrin," Rehkow says, "and he was really positive. He explained everything clearly."

Last year was the first year of the combine's revamped program for specialists, and it may have been the reason Rehkow was even there.

In an effort to streamline travel for teams and prospects later in the draft process, the NFL invited more specialists to Indy than in the past and turned it into more of a showcase compared to the rest of the combine. That has opened up slots for a couple of more position players.

The specialists still pretty much do the same tasks, but in a different format than the rest of the field. They've got their own hotel rooms. Instead of 18-minute formal interviews with a team, they sit at the head of a table with reps from four teams for 15 minutes and then rotate through all eight tables.

Each specialist pretty much gets a podium during the media sessions, not a table like many of the more than 300 prospects.

Back in 2017, Austin Rehkow kicked earlier in the week and then could take a breath. Ryan's group didn't kick until the last morning they were there and flew out that afternoon.

But some things never change. Austin told Ryan about the weigh-in, but how can you prepare to wear the least amount of clothes you've ever worn in front of the most people?

"Standing up there in your underwear, it was different. Not a super common experience," Rehkow says.

The man barked so the teams could hear and then jot down, "Ryan Rehkow, BYU … Six-Four-Zero … 235 pounds … Hand 8 7/8 … Arm 31 ¼."

The physicals were also the same. A trip to the hospital for X-Rays and scans before being assigned a doctor to accompany Rehkow to eight different rooms with four doctors repping the teams. He got a full bill of health after the doctor ticked off his minor medical history and said the scans were negative.

"Luckily as a punter, you're fairly sheltered from a lot of that," Rehkow says.

And Simmons hasn't tinkered much with his drills.

"It was pretty standard," Rehkow says. "You're going to hit a couple of punts in the open field just down the middle. You'll hit some right and left, and then they'll simulate like your team is backed up in the back of the end zone. You've just got to boot it out of there. And, some pin or pooch punts where you're trying to pin it inside the 20."

Rehkow knew pretty much what was coming because his personal coach had a mock script. That's the biggest difference from '03 for Simmons. The prospects are much better prepared physically because of that combine training every agent now offers.

"More specialized," Simmons says. "It's why field-goal percentages are better. It's why punting averages are better."

But the interviews aren't the same. A different world spawns different questions. Simmons, hesitant to tip his strategy, runs through a general checklist:

"Players have to deal with so many different things. Now you have NIL. You have transfers. Why did you transfer? Why did you go from this school to that school? What is the motivation for that? Was it something that physically that you had to deal with that made you change? Were you getting replaced? Did you feel like you'd get a better opportunity somewhere else? Was it something with your family? Because those are all things that could come into play here for us."

Simmons is looking at more than specialists. He's scouring cover players and returners. But no matter who, he's focused on personalities. In some cases, he's got to make a judgment off a 15-minute interview or one of those one-on-one interviews with position players.

"Do I want to deal with this guy?" Simmons asks. "Do I understand the changes that he made and why he made them and why he moved? Maybe he's financially oriented. These guys get paid money, real dollars now. It's like free agency."

Rehkow, older than most combine prospects at 25, had no such issues. After going on a two-year mission, he kicked all four years at BYU. But, thanks to that specialization, he was as well prepared for the interviews as he was for the punting drills.

One of the selling points of the agency that represents him, United Athlete Sports, is a former NFL scout on staff who prepped the prospects on what teams would ask. He advised them to review their college tapes because there would be questions such as, "What were your three best games? Your worst game? Who was the best player you saw?"

"If you're just thinking off the top of your head, you might overlook things," Rehkow says. "It was one of those things after the combine I appreciated the preparation."

Rehkow is almost apologetic he didn't get any of those crazy questions he's heard others asked. He didn't have to worry about being a tree.

"With specialists, they kind of know what they're getting into," Rehkow says. "I feel like most of the time (they're thinking) is this a specialist who's a little bit of a strange duck and is kind of out there? Or is he a personable guy who is going to fit better in a locker room?"

Simmons assures Rehkow it is the latter. When it came to him and his steady personality in the Evan McPherson mold, that was a big attraction. Although Indy was the first time he met Rehkow, Simmons knew his game from college tape and performance in the East-West All-Star Game.

Simmons much prefers to scout in person, and he knew he'd get another shot to see Rehkow a few weeks after the combine in Dallas at the Big 12 pro day, a camp he also ran.

(That was another item Rehkow put in storage. When he was shopping for teams last summer, the omnipresent Simmons was a known quantity.)

"I had some interest and then it got backed up by what he did at the combine," Simmons says. "And then he was probably better at the Big 12 pro day. I kept seeing the same thing, which just ratified what I felt."

Rehkow, who didn't have a combine roommate like his brother, made sure he went to bed early the night before he punted. Not only was it because he knew the workout was first thing, but he also knew there'd be a patch of the night he couldn't sleep.

"How many times do you punt in front of all 32 teams?" Rehkow asks. "This is it."

He was up at 5, went right into his pregame routine like he did in his last college game at Oklahoma State, and then walked over to Lucas Oil Stadium with his group.

By mid-afternoon he was on a plane mulling a so-so performance. Not thrilling. But he learned something that would help him at the Big 12 pro day, not to mention the Bengals' December playoff run.

"You're kind of just so amped up. And so I feel like I felt some of that for sure," Rehkow says. "Where it was, 'All right, take a deep breath. Just get the blood level down again, and the heart rate down, and just treat it as normal as possible.' Treat it as okay, I'm out there on the practice field here in Utah just kicking with my brothers and enjoying it after that experience.

"Next time there's an opportunity or a moment that I have to prove myself, I want to be able to leave no doubt. I don't want there to be any questions."

Suddenly, the season of questions is upon the NFL again.

"One-stop shopping," Simmons says. "Everybody gets to see the same guys in the same place."