Two-way player: Bengals' Simpson succeeds on, off the football field

Jerome Simpson isn't insulted when he's asked if he thinks the Bengals reached to pick him in the second round of the NFL Draft. The soft spoken Coastal Carolina receiver, projected by most to be a second-day pick, simply smiles and nods his head.

"I didn't think I would go that high," says Simpson, putting on his black and orange uniform for the first time during a trading card photo shoot in Los Angeles. "I wasn't even home when I got picked."

Simpson, who caught 41 passes for 697 yards and 11 touchdowns last season, was actually with his family, doing what he normally does on Saturdays in the spring. He was heading to the Winston Salem Flea Market after enjoying a family meal of pizza and wings at Elizabeth's, a local Italian restaurant near his home.

"We were about 15 minutes from my house when I got a call from a strange number so I looked at my mom and said, 'Turn the radio down, turn the radio down,'" says Simpson, who was also with his grandmother and two uncles. "I'll never forget it. We were driving down Highway 29 in Greensboro when I got the call that changed my life."

"Hi, Jerome, how you doing," said the voice on the other line.

"Doing good," said Jerome as he looked at the faces in his Toyota Tundra, which he had just pulled to the side of the road.

"This is Coach [Marvin] Lewis, get ready and turn your TV on because we're about to pick you."

Simpson and his family immediately got out of his car and began celebrating on the side of the highway as cars raced past them. "I told my family, put the hazard lights on and we were on the highway jumping up and down and going crazy," he says. "People were driving by, thinking what's wrong with those people, but if they only knew. It was the most exciting time of my life."

It wasn't until Simpson returned home that he finally saw himself getting picked as he TiVoed the first day on the off chance that he was selected.

"I was expecting to go in the third round or something," says Simpson. "My agent said I had a 5 percent chance of getting picked late in the second round depending on how the draft goes, but I was expecting to go later."