Today starts the return of the world’s biggest job interview as the NFL welcomes hundreds of potential draftees to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
I am such a football nerd I actually watch the workouts that the scouts have the college players run. I like getting to know the future stars of the league while they are still young, unknown and hungry.
Three years ago I heard Mike Mayock say of George Kittle that the young man was the “most willing blocker among the tight end group.” Kittle might not be quite as big as some others, and he might not have gotten as many chances to shine in college, but he is eager to do his job and have success, Mayock explained.
Before the day was out, I had Kittle ranked at least third, if not second, on my TE board. O.J. Howard looked like a stud at the top of the board. Evan Engram looked like a fine pass catcher. And Kittle looked good enough as both a blocker and receiver to challenge Engram.
And yet on draft day, there were eight TEs taken ahead of Kittle. That was crazy, especially Adam Shaheen going in the second round because he looked stiff as a board.
After three seasons, Kittle has been to the Pro Bowl twice and has more receiving yards than anyone in the draft class, regardless of position. And that includes Christian McCaffrey, JuJu Smith-Shuster, Chris Godwin, Kenny Golladay and Cooper Kupp.
Making time
One idea I’d like to revisit is something I wrote about eight years ago: all that is messed up about trying to quantify players’ speed.
It’s like Drew Carey would say at the beginning of each episode, “Welcome to ‘Who’s Line Is It Anyway?’ where everything’s made up and the points don’t matter.”
As a reminder to those of you who don’t have perfect recall, I pointed out that the Olympics use electronic timers to tell exactly when the starter pistol goes off right up to the time the runner crosses the finish line. It’s all very modern and scientific.
The NFL has a bunch of guys using stopwatches and trying to jam their thumbs down on the stopper at just the right point when the runner crosses the finish line. There is nothing exact about this.
Okay, sure, there is an “official” time at the combine, but even that number is flawed. The clock doesn’t start on a pistol shot; it begins when the player first moves. So you have the runner gaining about two-tenths of a second by not having to hear the sound and make a reaction.
Second, you have the less-than-athletic guys holding stopwatches who have to see the movement and then react by starting the watch. This can subtract about a quarter of a second off what the runner’s time should actually be.
So if you see some slow-footed Tom Brady-like quarterback crossing the line in 5.00 seconds on a handheld stopwatch, that would be more like 5.45 if done on the kind of electronic equipment used at the Olympics.
Wait, the NFL is a cash cow. Surely the combine can afford good equipment!
Well yes, but a lot of players refuse to run at the combine and want to wait until they get back home. It could be that they are (1) injured and need time to heal; (2) are taking training on how to sprint and need more instruction; or (3) believe that their home track might be an advantage over the Indianapolis surface.
None of those college campuses are going to be using Olympic timers, so their numbers would look falsely fast by comparison.
Or at least that is the common excuse.
If I were commissioner of the NFL, I would simply say that the NFL is going to use Olympic-quality timers and anyone who doesn’t run at the combine will have his recorded 40-yard time boosted by 0.45 of a second to account for the lack of proper equipment.
Boom, end of story. Anyone who thinks he can do better than 0.2 of a second on his start is going to want to run at the combine and not at pro day, so that would increase participation.
One of the problems with having fake 40-yard dash times is that it gives NFL players a false sense of speed. They are superior athletes, no doubt, but they don’t need to be issuing challenges to world-class sprinters. That’s just crazy.
Back in 2005, Mark Zeigler wrote a column for the San Diego Union-Tribune talking about 40 times. He mentioned that in a breakdown of footage, the 1988 gold medal 100m sprinter Ben Johnson had a time of about 4.38 seconds in the first 40 yards of that race.
Johnson was later stripped of his world record because he was hopped up on steroids to achieve this time of 4.38 seconds.
And yet Chris Johnson, coming out of East Carolina University, ran at 4.24? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
Well, add on that 0.45 of a second for hand timing, and it comes to more like 4.69 seconds with Olympic timers.
Beep Beep
Or to look at it another way, NFL’s Next Gen Stats has been tracking a lot of data over the past four years, including the fastest ball carriers in the league. Any RB or WR (or defensive player who gets a turnover) has been tracked to see what his top speed is.
Over the past four years, only 19 times has a player ever topped 22 mph. Christian McCaffrey came close last year at 21.8 mph. Ted Ginn is 13th on the list for a TD reception in 2016 at 22.11 mph.
Only one man in four years has broken 23 mph. That was Kansas City’s Tyreek Hill at 23.24.
Remember, that is his peak speed reached at any point during his run with the ball.
When Usain Bolt won the 100 meters World Championships in Berlin in 2009, Bolt had a top speed of 27.78. He got up to speed so fast and stayed high for so long that Bolt’s entire race was run with an average speed of 23.35 — including the start when he was just getting going.
So Bolt’s average time was slightly faster Hill’s peak speed. And Bolt’s peak speed was so fast he would have pulled away from Hill in a race by six and two-thirds feet per second.
In other words, even if Hill could have gotten out of the starting blocks in great shape and accelerated alongside Bolt for the first half of the race, Bolt still would have pulled away like the Road Runner leaving Wile E. Coyote to cross the finish line 13 feet ahead.
That’s not even close. Those boys need a dose of reality.
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Source: https://www.mtairynews.com