Terrelle Pryor's 40 speed: Someone call Snopes

"YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH!"

 

Times in the 40 can only tell you part of the story. So someone runs, say a 4.42. That's how fast they can run 40 yards in a straight line probably wearing a minimum of clothing (t-shirt, shorts, sneakers). Jerry Rice's 40 time wasn't impressive when he was drafted by the 49ers. I don't know if he ever had blinding speed according to his 40 times.

Put the man in pads on game day and give him a catch in the open field and be a defensive back who's beaten deep and tell me Jerry Rice in his prime was slow.

 

Not sure what your point is. That argument has been made several times, and I agree with it.

 

I'm assuming that picture was of the great Mike Mamula? ;D

 

Willis McGahee's name seems to not belong on that list. Maybe pre-knee injury?

I also think Herschel Walker could have made this list if it would date back that far.

 

Devil, ANYBODY could have made that list because the list bullshit. It's basically just a compilation of the Top 25 urban legends about 40 times, none of those alleged times are confirmed and there's no scientific validity to that list at all.

As I understand, the fastest time anybody has ever ever run the 40 under electronically timed and monitored conditions at the Combines is 4.25, so as far as I'm concerned that's the fastest it's ever been run. None of these claims about what guys allegedly "unofficially" ran on their home turf with a hand timer have any real credibility.

 

I agree. A 40 time is just like the height and weight of a an athlete. No prospect ever grew or became bigger once a legit tape measure or scale was placed in front of them.

I will say that I think it would be fascinating to know the 40 time for some players under the strict electronically timed and monitored conditions that they use at the combine. How fast were Walker and Jackson? How fast were big backs like Harris, Brown and Campbell? Was Skeets Nehemiah that fast?

A good radar gun on Bob Feller or Walter Johnson, to me, would be very interesting as well. Maybe not to all, but I would love to an accurate measure of how fast they really were.

 

Agreed. And I guess all the phony exaggerations about 40 times are harmless, but they still annoy the shit out of me because they've given the football watching public a distorted understanding of what a great 40 time actually is.

The truth is that guys who can legitimately run under 4.4 40s under properly controlled conditions are EXTRAORDINARILY rare, only a very small handful of guys in the entire country have that kind of burst. But you'd never know it from watching and reading all the false 40 time crap that's out there. The number of guys who can actually run that speed pales in comparison to the number that we're TOLD can do it.

An example that comes to mind is Percy Harvin. For three years, we were constantly told that Harvin was the 4.2 40 man. Verne Lundquist, Gary Danielson and Brent Musberger made a point of mentioning it several times in every Florida broadcast, and it got dropped in nearly every article written about Harvin. Problem is, when it was put up or shut up time at last year's combine, turns out that the best time Harvin had in him was a 4.41. He never actually had 4.2 speed, but that doesn't stop Joe football fan from hearing it for three years so then he starts thinking a 4.4 must not be that great because someone else runs a 4.2. Most fans have no idea how rare sub-4.4 speed actually is.

 

According to wikipedia...

Apparently all of the times pre-1990 at the combine were on handheld stopwatches. So that would explain Deion, Bo, Beebe, Green and some of the others at the top of the list. There was something on Wiki that said Green was the fastest at the combine with a 4.09.

Since 1990, when they started doing it electronically, the fastest at the combine has been a 4.25.

 

Almost every 40 time not run at the combine is bullshit.

About 7-8 years ago, after reading a list of 40 times on a recruiting site that included dozens of 4.3s, I asked an NFL scout I know how many legitimate 4.3 sprinters there were in the league. He said there were maybe five or six -- and a couple of those were questionable.

Times like the ones above are the reason track and field records must be electronically timed to be accepted. Hand times are ridiculously inaccurate for such a short sprint, almost always on the fast side.

 

When I was covering the NFL, I heard the same thing. That no legitimate NFL scout gave almost any validity to any 40-time that wasn't run at the combine and that, like you said, there were 4-5 guys in the NFL who could run below a 4.3 on a regular basis.

There was one guy several years ago who had the best time at the combine and I asked a scout what he thought of the guy, who was pretty unknown otherwise, and he said, "I wouldn't touch the guy."

I asked why and he said, "First of all, he'll never run a 40 like that again. Second of all, I don't care how fast he is, he can't play."

The guy was drafted, but did basically nothing during his career.

 

Not wading through all the replies to say this.
If you can run a 4.3, you're a complete idiot to do anything but train to be a world-class sprinter. More money, more fame, longer career.
None of the guys listed is close to that speed. Puhleeeeeeeze.