At the annual NFL Scouting Combine this week at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the measurables like the 40-yard dash, bench press, vertical leap will make for good television on the NFL Network. But often, the big decisions teams make on a player won’t come as a result of his on-camera audition, but behind closed doors.

The interview process gives each team the opportunity to get up close and personal with a player. Teams are limited to 60 players, and they get 15 minutes with each player. Called “the NFL equivalent of speed dating,” it’s a frantic process that can often tilt the organizational scales in one direction or another when it comes to making a draft day decision.

While different teams place different value on the interview — for most, it’s part of an overall evaluation process that includes collegiate play, work at the Pro Day and performance at the combine — the Patriots have traditionally put a healthy amount of stock in the process. Players who have gone through the process with New England describe a fairly intense session with some of the members of the coaching staff and the front office peppering the player with a wide variety of questions.

“You ask questions to figure out if this guy is controlling his life or is someone else controlling it,” said Chiefs GM Scott Pioli, who was part of the Patriots interview process at the combine when he was part of the New England front office.

Ace the interview with the Patriots, and chances are good that you’ll be hearing from New England on draft day. The Patriots director of player personnel Nick Caserio said one of the reasons New England was so high on safety Pat Chung entering the draft was its interview with him at the 2009 combine.

“After 15 minutes, we were ready to run through a wall,” Caserio later recounted of their time with Chung. “It was like, ‘Sign me up.’”

While the top-shelf guys don’t necessarily depend on the interview process — teams won’t necessarily shy away from Ndamukong Suh if he bombs — a bad interview can scare teams off a mid-round pick, and end up costing a prospect thousands of dollars. Conversely, a good interview can take a player who has mid-round value and improve his stock.

As a result, players now realize how that face-to-face time can make them a lot more money if they take it seriously. And just as they have prepared themselves physically for the combine experience, many have started doing the same for the interview.

“I think over the last three, four or five years, [players have] done a much better job of preparing themselves for the interviews,” said Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher. “They have all the right answers. It’s incumbent upon us to ask different questions now, so we’ve changed our questions now so we can get through some of the canned rehearsed answers if you will.”

Teams get a relatively short window, so the questioning can start on a benign note, and even include some game film designed to have the prospect give a firsthand account of what he was doing and thinking.  Former Boston College defensive lineman B.J. Raji — who was drafted by Green Bay — recalled a sitdown last year at the combine where the Saints asked him to take a look as some of his own game film.

“[The Saints] kind of had the film set up," he said. “They had four plays that they broke down with me from this past season. They kind of wanted me to explain what we were doing on that particular play.”

But across the board, the good stuff often comes when teams decide to push buttons. Personnel men say the best and most revealing interviews are often the most uncomfortable ones. While there are often no doubts about a prospect’s physical abilities at the combine, answers that show temperament, character and personality are some of the most important topics that come out of the interview.

“The questions generally start out, ‘Tell us about yourself, tell us about your background and tell us about your family.’ And then, is there anything aware of that we don’t know that we’re going to find out,” Fisher said. “And then if the answer is yes, we’ve got a player that had some sort of issue, and he’s going to talk candidly about it, and be honest and upfront about it.

“I think you can use your imagination to try to get a sense for the kind of information we’re looking for.”