Player Speed Data (1 Viewer)

Next Gen Stats has been tracking NFL player speeds on the field since 2016. They publish tables of the 20 fastest ballcarrier speeds of each week.

Other sources like Recruiting Analytics, Logic Sports, and Zebra Technologies calculate and publish some speeds reached by college players, and even some high school players. I've collected some of these reported speeds in a spreadsheet.

I've had some things to say about these data in my thread on the 2020 rookie class, and some other folks like @Iceman03 have also been paying attention to these numbers for evaluating prospects.

But the question of what to make of player speed data seems like a more general one, not limited to evaluating prospects, and the best data set we have is about NFL players. So I'm making this thread to talk about it. I have some thoughts about it and probably some other people will too.

Speed matters. In a game of inches that nanosecond of speed can be the difference between a tackle or a long gain.

That said the scale of these measurements I think should be condensed to a unit like yards per second in my opinion, so we could actually measure the difference of the players speed that is relative to the field surface they are playing on.

Then the time being per hour is really out of scale with the thing we are measuring here that is happening in less than a minute.

I think what we really want here is yards per second.

Next Gen Stats max speed numbers change by a surprisingly large amount from year to year.

They publish the 20 fastest ballcarrier speeds each week, which gives us a data set of 340 regular season speeds each season (20 per week for 17 weeks). I have those data (and playoff data) in this spreadsheet. Here is the average of those 340 speeds for each year.

2016: 20.76 mph
2017: 20.00 mph
2018: 20.56 mph
2019: 20.47 mph

That's a huge drop from 2016 to 2017, and then a huge bounceback from 2017 to 2018, and then things stayed relatively stable from 2018 to 2019. It seems very likely to me that this is due to changes in their method, and not due to anything like players getting slower or faster. They made some changes to their method after 2016 which resulted in slower times, and then they made some more changes to their method after 2017 which resulted in faster times, and then they kept their method relatively stable from 2018-19. So the numbers between different years are not directly comparable.

I think that has to be the case because the gaps between years are just too big. And the different years look even more different if we zoom in on the details of the distribution rather than just averaging all 340 speeds together.

2016 stands out even farther from the other years if we focus in on the high end. 13 of the 15 fastest regular season times that they've recorded are from 2016, and just 2 are from 2017-19. Here are the top 10:

23.24    Tyreek Hill    2016
22.77    Tyreek Hill    2016
22.60    DeSean Jackson    2016
22.50    Stefon Diggs    2016
22.40    Xavier Rhodes    2016
22.40    Brandin Cooks    2016
22.34    Mike Wallace    2016
22.30    Matt Breida    2019
22.25    Tevin Coleman    2016
22.25    Marquise Goodwin    2016

2016 looks more similar to 2018-19 over the bottom half of the distribution (plays 171-340 in the dataset), although it's still somewhat faster there.

2017 is slower than the other years throughout the distribution, and this is most apparent at the bottom. The 60 slowest plays to make the weekly top 20 list all happened in 2017.

My guess is that the method they were using in 2016 was kind of noisy, and so they got less accurate numbers especially at the high end when some plays happened to get especially large positive measurement errors. For 2017 they made some adjustments to try to restrain this problem, but they did it in a way that depressed the estimated speeds across the board. For instance, maybe they looked at max speed over a longer distance - a player's max speed over a 5 yard distance will be a bit slower than his max speed over a 1 yard distance, and the estimate of speed over 5 yards will also be less noisy than the estimate of speed over 1 yard. Then in 2018 they found ways to improve the estimate to be less noisy, without depressing all of the speeds.

So if you're planning to look at anything which involves speeds across multiple years (as I am), you should do something to adjust for these issues with the data.

One idea is to look at the player's ranking for the year. In 2016 Tyreek Hill had the fastest recorded speed (23.24), in 2017 Leonard Fournette had the fastest speed (22.05), in 2018 Matt Breida had the fastest speed (22.09), and in 2019 Matt Breida had the fastest speed (22.30). You could treat those as all equally good - 1st place for the year. They are reported as different speeds, but the information about players' relative speeds within the season seems more reliable than the exact reported speeds. If you want to put them back on a mph scale (which is helpful for some purposes), you could calculate the average of those four #1 speeds (which is 22.42 mph) and credit them with that. Or maybe just average together the 2018 & 2019 #1 speeds (which gives you 22.20) because probably the 2018-19 estimates are better and more similar to what they'll use going forward. And you can do similarly with each spot in the rankings.

If we’re talking about new speed measurements, I would think different things would be much more important than straight line top speed. 
Some examples of functional game speed that NFL teams probably are measuring or they should -

speed of a rb as they’re turning the corner

acceleration from a stand still catch

time for a WR to reach 10 yards

Time for edge rusher to get 5-7 yards into the backfield

anythimg that captures short bursts and real necessary speed with pads on

That is my uneducated opinion of course. I would think of it as a way to quantitatively analyze things for the tape watching old school style. 

IHEARTFF said:

If we’re talking about new speed measurements, I would think different things would be much more important than straight line top speed. 
Some examples of functional game speed that NFL teams probably are measuring or they should -

speed of a rb as they’re turning the corner

acceleration from a stand still catch

time for a WR to reach 10 yards

Time for edge rusher to get 5-7 yards into the backfield

anythimg that captures short bursts and real necessary speed with pads on

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Yeah, there are a lot of other stats besides max speed which could be great to have.

I went on a bit of a rant about that last night. One idea is to track acceleration/burst, which is something like: how long does it take a player to speed up from 5 mph to 15 mph on the 5% of his plays where he has the quickest burst.

Next Gen Stats tracks pass rusher get-off ("the time it takes for a pass rusher to cross the line of scrimmage after the snap") which seems like a great stat, but they don't share most of the data.

For LBs (and quarterbacks) we could track reaction time on play action passes - when play action draws the LB forward, how long after the snap does it take the LB to get back to the depth that he had at the snap?

But these are hopes about data that people might be able to get from player tracking in the future. I'm more interested in focusing on what we can learn from the data that we already have, especially the speed data.

ZWK said:

Yeah, there are a lot of other stats besides max speed which could be great to have.

I went on a bit of a rant about that last night. One idea is to track acceleration/burst, which is something like: how long does it take a player to speed up from 5 mph to 15 mph on the 5% of his plays where he has the quickest burst.

Next Gen Stats tracks pass rusher get-off ("the time it takes for a pass rusher to cross the line of scrimmage after the snap") which seems like a great stat, but they don't share most of the data.

For LBs (and quarterbacks) we could track reaction time on play action passes - when play action draws the LB forward, how long after the snap does it take the LB to get back to the depth that he had at the snap?

But these are hopes about data that people might be able to get from player tracking in the future. I'm more interested in focusing on what we can learn from the data that we already have, especially the speed data.

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Fair enough. I don’t know what we can glean from existing mph data. 

I use it with caution. Some of the ways I’ve used it, and as I’ve said in another thread or two, is comparing on field athleticism vs measurables (Kareem Hunt, Darrell Williams). Another way I have tried to integrate some is, when I can find some data, enhance my opinion about players who may be declining or not in decline but perceived to be. For example: DJax still torched last year and I found a stat suggesting only two backs under a certain threshold of touches (I believe somewhere above two hundred) failed to reach over 18 mph (LBell and Zeke). This influences my opinions but as of right now doesn’t have direct impact. It’s another tool until the NFL gives us full access and allows us to make our own correlation.

When you see a player hitting over roughly 21 mph, they’re probably capable of having some big plays on the field. I am very much a fan of having big play capability over a grinder but only as long as other metrics also align. You won’t see me roster much Hardman in dynasty but he is certainly more than able to change an NFL game and that is valuable to NFL teams.

40’s are an inconsistent way to measure speed/burst... though it has been shown the 10 yd split on the high end can be indicative of great burst. 

Iceman03 said:

I use it with caution. Some of the ways I’ve used it, and as I’ve said in another thread or two, is comparing on field athleticism vs measurables (Kareem Hunt, Darrell Williams). Another way I have tried to integrate some is, when I can find some data, enhance my opinion about players who may be declining or not in decline but perceived to be. For example: DJax still torched last year and I found a stat suggesting only two backs under a certain threshold of touches (I believe somewhere above two hundred) failed to reach over 18 mph (LBell and Zeke). This influences my opinions but as of right now doesn’t have direct impact. It’s another tool until the NFL gives us full access and allows us to make our own correlation.

When you see a player hitting over roughly 21 mph, they’re probably capable of having some big plays on the field. I am very much a fan of having big play capability over a grinder but only as long as other metrics also align. You won’t see me roster much Hardman in dynasty but he is certainly more than able to change an NFL game and that is valuable to NFL teams.

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Yeah, I'm wondering how useful this can be for spotting player decline.

Le'Veon Bell has never cracked the weekly top 20 list ever during any season (2016-19). 2016 & 2017 were two of his best seasons, so apparently that's just who he is as a player and not a sign of decline.

Zeke has usually been up there - he had the 26th fastest speed of 2016, the 96th fastest speed of 2017, and the 39th fastest speed of 2018. He had 10 plays in 2016-18 that were among the 300 fastest of the year (so 10 out of those 900 plays were his). Then in 2019 he didn't crack any weekly top 20 list. So that might indicate decline.

The guys who fell off the leaderboard in 2018 after being up there in 2016 & 2017 (despite continuing to play in 2018) were Jalen Richard, Robert Woods, Mark Ingram, Chris Moore, Doug Baldwin, Sammy Watkins, and Marvin Jones. So I guess this wasn't that strong an indicator of decline - most of these guys continued to play fine in 2019 (Woods, Ingram, Watkins, Jones), 1 retired (Baldwin), Moore never had much of a role, Richard lost workload to a rookie. Woods & Watkins saw their measured speed bounce back in 2019 to 2016-17 levels, while Ingram & Marvin Jones stayed off the leaderboards.

Guys who failed to crack the leaderboards in 2019 after being up there at least a couple times in 2016-2018: Ezekiel Elliott, Devonta Freeman, Michael Thomas, Todd Gurley, Tyler Lockett, Marlon Mack, Mark Ingram, Melvin Gordon, James White, Jalen Richard, Mohamed Sanu, LeSean McCoy, Jordan Howard, Marvin Jones, Adam Humphries, Sterling Shepard, Tavon Austin. So some possible concern about decline for those guys. This list is sorted by number of "adjusted touches" in 2019, where each reception counts as 1 adj touch, each carry counts as 0.5, and each kick/punt/int return counts as 2 adj touches (since intuition and the mph data suggest that players more often have an opportunity to approach their max speed on some types of plays than others).

David Johnson's max speed in 2019 was as good as it was in 2016 & 2018. Also in the 2019 "as fast as ever" club: DeAndre Hopkins, Golden Tate, Tevin Coleman, Davante Adams, Stefon Diggs, Odell Beckham, Gio Bernard, and DeSean Jackson.

On the other hand, Kareem Hunt made the max speed leaderboard 3 times during the first 3 weeks of his rookie year (2017) and hasn't returned since. Emmanuel Sanders made the leaderboard once solidly in 2016, just barely in 2017, and not at all since.

Guys who have never cracked the max speed weekly leaderboards: Josh Jacobs, Royce Freeman, Devin Singletary, Anthony Miller.

Sony Michel just barely cracked the list one week in 2018.

Kendall Wright and then Taywan Taylor showed me lateral speed can get you open against any DB. There are plenty of examples.

Watching hips of WRs should tell you something of fluidity to switch from one point in a cut to another. You can almost tell in the simple warm up routines. Some of the best look like they almost don't have a lower spine.

Jerry Rice's time was tracked a million years ago when they were trying to show his mind bending ability to cut and not slow down. Fitz was in an interview once talking about this too.

Ricky Williams and Derrick Henry have/had a fifth gear that you didn't see til you did.

Vick could be in fifth gear instantly.

Dante Hall could stop on a dime and had moves as good as anyone but he wasn't much of a receiver or RB.

I love speed but it is totally about how they use it. You can discard Ross' first two years and so many other fast guys like him. 

Every sport starts with a great first step. I can totally tell you busts by that alone. 

ZWK said:

Zeke has usually been up there - he had the 26th fastest speed of 2016, the 96th fastest speed of 2017, and the 39th fastest speed of 2018. He had 10 plays in 2016-18 that were among the 300 fastest of the year (so 10 out of those 900 plays were his). Then in 2019 he didn't crack any weekly top 20 list. So that might indicate decline.

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I find that surprising since his 40 yard dash was only 4.47.  I guess it must mean he starts slowly but has a fast top end speed.  If given the choice, it's better to have quick acceleration than top end speed for a running back.  But when you are a big power back like Zeke, having any kind of speed is a huge asset.