A Note from NFL Draft Scout on 40 Times (1 Viewer)

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members/news/notes64.php (look for CJ Spiller note on 3/1)...

Many different 40 times will be reported over the next few days, with discrepancies as wide as a full tenth of a second like those for Spiller, so it's important to understand where they come from. The only listed times available during the event come from NFL Network and NFL.com, neither of which discloses how they arrive at the timed speeds. As Rob Rang noted in his blog this weekend, beware of any 40 time labeled as "official" from the combine. Those who participate in the 40 typically run twice, and on each run they are timed by two hand-held stopwatches and one electronic timer, which is actually initiated by hand on the player's first movement. Combine data put together for NFL teams by the National Football Scouting service, the private entity not owned by the league but which is actually in charge of running the event, includes all six of those times for each player, but no single official time. Teams and scouts don't receive that information until at least two weeks after the event. Team scouts and coaches have various approaches for getting the 40 time they use from those six timings. Some use averages. Some throw out the slowest and fastest and then average the rest. Some ignore the whole thing and use a time taken by their own scout. In deference to the players, NFLDraftScout.com uses the best verifiable - or listed - time from the combine unless it is conspicuously skewed from the other times, which happens when a hand timer has an itchy trigger finger on the stopwatch. However, the times are usually well-grouped so a general idea of the player's speed is easily attained.

 

[cvnpoka]

if this is true then 40 times are a joke.

 

[DevilDog919]

if this is true then 40 times are a joke.

Really, they are anyway. 40 time does not translate directly to football speed, or to how fast you are in the 3rd quarter of a game.

 

[Genghis Khan]

They also do the shuttle run (and a cone run?). It's obviously a mistake to use the 40 time as the sole indicator; but when scouts take a look at all the factors, it does provide some indication.

 

[Football Jones]

40 time is the single biggest crock of crap in scouting today. Someday, 40 times will be obsolete. Not sure how they'll do it, but possibly something like tracking a player's speed during the game will be the norm.

As much as 40 times are perceived to be of the upmost importance by draft pundits & the vast majority of the FF community, it's not a pimple on the butt of an indicator of how well a player will perform at any position. Quickness is tenfold more important. I get a kick out of how much people move their draft board around after viewing the Combine. It's a HUGE mistake.

There's some merit to pro teams moving their board slightly due to Combine performance, depending on what event & the respective player, & sometimes a player can skyrocket if the conditions are right, but football movement is totally different than running 40 yards in a straight line with no pads on. Like night & day.

 

[werdnoynek]

40 time is the single biggest crock of crap in scouting today. Someday, 40 times will be obsolete. Not sure how they'll do it, but possibly something like tracking a player's speed during the game will be the norm.

As much as 40 times are perceived to be of the upmost importance by draft pundits & the vast majority of the FF community, it's not a pimple on the butt of an indicator of how well a player will perform at any position. Quickness is tenfold more important. I get a kick out of how much people move their draft board around after viewing the Combine. It's a HUGE mistake.

There's some merit to pro teams moving their board slightly due to Combine performance, depending on what event & the respective player, & sometimes a player can skyrocket if the conditions are right, but football movement is totally different than running 40 yards in a straight line with no pads on. Like night & day.

i agree with you and the others that 40 times are pretty worthless and this goes to show how questionable the times actually are. it's nice to see guys with that straight line speed, but it really doesn't translate to much in game, with pads, at game speed at any position. it's very odd to me that 40 time is taken so serious not only by NFL teams but by our fellow FBGs.

 

[babydemon90]

They should do the 40 in pads, imo

 

[TWP]

They should do the game without pads, imo

There you go...

 

[The Real Hipster Doofus]

40 time is the single biggest crock of crap in scouting today. Someday, 40 times will be obsolete. Not sure how they'll do it, but possibly something like tracking a player's speed during the game will be the norm.

As much as 40 times are perceived to be of the upmost importance by draft pundits & the vast majority of the FF community, it's not a pimple on the butt of an indicator of how well a player will perform at any position. Quickness is tenfold more important. I get a kick out of how much people move their draft board around after viewing the Combine. It's a HUGE mistake.

There's some merit to pro teams moving their board slightly due to Combine performance, depending on what event & the respective player, & sometimes a player can skyrocket if the conditions are right, but football movement is totally different than running 40 yards in a straight line with no pads on. Like night & day.

i agree with you and the others that 40 times are pretty worthless and this goes to show how questionable the times actually are. it's nice to see guys with that straight line speed, but it really doesn't translate to much in game, with pads, at game speed at any position. it's very odd to me that 40 time is taken so serious not only by NFL teams but by our fellow FBGs.

While I generally agree that 40 times are worthless, I think it helps to seperate the players like Chris Johnson who just have out of this world speed from the rest of the pack. Basically, if you arent putting up a time like that, then it doesnt really matter all that much what time you do put up.

 

[vandyt]

40 time is the single biggest crock of crap in scouting today. Someday, 40 times will be obsolete. Not sure how they'll do it, but possibly something like tracking a player's speed during the game will be the norm.

As much as 40 times are perceived to be of the upmost importance by draft pundits & the vast majority of the FF community, it's not a pimple on the butt of an indicator of how well a player will perform at any position. Quickness is tenfold more important. I get a kick out of how much people move their draft board around after viewing the Combine. It's a HUGE mistake.

There's some merit to pro teams moving their board slightly due to Combine performance, depending on what event & the respective player, & sometimes a player can skyrocket if the conditions are right, but football movement is totally different than running 40 yards in a straight line with no pads on. Like night & day.

If scouts found that valuable, they'd be doing it now. Its not like its hard to measure distance covered (and the time to do so) on a football field with a little geometry and a stopwatch.

 

[benson_will_lead_the_way]

40 time is the single biggest crock of crap in scouting today. Someday, 40 times will be obsolete. Not sure how they'll do it, but possibly something like tracking a player's speed during the game will be the norm.

As much as 40 times are perceived to be of the upmost importance by draft pundits & the vast majority of the FF community, it's not a pimple on the butt of an indicator of how well a player will perform at any position. Quickness is tenfold more important. I get a kick out of how much people move their draft board around after viewing the Combine. It's a HUGE mistake.

There's some merit to pro teams moving their board slightly due to Combine performance, depending on what event & the respective player, & sometimes a player can skyrocket if the conditions are right, but football movement is totally different than running 40 yards in a straight line with no pads on. Like night & day.

i agree with you and the others that 40 times are pretty worthless and this goes to show how questionable the times actually are. it's nice to see guys with that straight line speed, but it really doesn't translate to much in game, with pads, at game speed at any position. it's very odd to me that 40 time is taken so serious not only by NFL teams but by our fellow FBGs.

Why do they bench 225 multiple times? They NEVER do that in a game...vs sometimes running 40 yards in a straight line.See how everything can be twisted in a manner in which it isn't appropriate.

What about the 3 cone drill?

-Will they ever run to a line, touch that line, back to the original line...touch it....then round a cone, a second cone, spinning around and rounding the following cone and returning to the original line.

 

[awesomeness]

40 time is the single biggest crock of crap in scouting today. Someday, 40 times will be obsolete. Not sure how they'll do it, but possibly something like tracking a player's speed during the game will be the norm.

As much as 40 times are perceived to be of the upmost importance by draft pundits & the vast majority of the FF community, it's not a pimple on the butt of an indicator of how well a player will perform at any position. Quickness is tenfold more important. I get a kick out of how much people move their draft board around after viewing the Combine. It's a HUGE mistake.

There's some merit to pro teams moving their board slightly due to Combine performance, depending on what event & the respective player, & sometimes a player can skyrocket if the conditions are right, but football movement is totally different than running 40 yards in a straight line with no pads on. Like night & day.

I agree with this, except i would go even further and replace the 40 time being a joke with the entire combine being a joke. The fact that the combine significantly changes people's rankings of players is ridiculous.

 

[Peggy Starfish]

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members/news/notes64.php (look for CJ Spiller note on 3/1)...

Many different 40 times will be reported over the next few days, with discrepancies as wide as a full tenth of a second like those for Spiller, so it's important to understand where they come from. The only listed times available during the event come from NFL Network and NFL.com, neither of which discloses how they arrive at the timed speeds. As Rob Rang noted in his blog this weekend, beware of any 40 time labeled as "official" from the combine. Those who participate in the 40 typically run twice, and on each run they are timed by two hand-held stopwatches and one electronic timer, which is actually initiated by hand on the player's first movement. Combine data put together for NFL teams by the National Football Scouting service, the private entity not owned by the league but which is actually in charge of running the event, includes all six of those times for each player, but no single official time. Teams and scouts don't receive that information until at least two weeks after the event. Team scouts and coaches have various approaches for getting the 40 time they use from those six timings. Some use averages. Some throw out the slowest and fastest and then average the rest. Some ignore the whole thing and use a time taken by their own scout. In deference to the players, NFLDraftScout.com uses the best verifiable - or listed - time from the combine unless it is conspicuously skewed from the other times, which happens when a hand timer has an itchy trigger finger on the stopwatch. However, the times are usually well-grouped so a general idea of the player's speed is easily attained.

 

[Instinctive]

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members/news/notes64.php (look for CJ Spiller note on 3/1)...

Many different 40 times will be reported over the next few days, with discrepancies as wide as a full tenth of a second like those for Spiller, so it's important to understand where they come from. The only listed times available during the event come from NFL Network and NFL.com, neither of which discloses how they arrive at the timed speeds. As Rob Rang noted in his blog this weekend, beware of any 40 time labeled as "official" from the combine. Those who participate in the 40 typically run twice, and on each run they are timed by two hand-held stopwatches and one electronic timer, which is actually initiated by hand on the player's first movement. Combine data put together for NFL teams by the National Football Scouting service, the private entity not owned by the league but which is actually in charge of running the event, includes all six of those times for each player, but no single official time. Teams and scouts don't receive that information until at least two weeks after the event. Team scouts and coaches have various approaches for getting the 40 time they use from those six timings. Some use averages. Some throw out the slowest and fastest and then average the rest. Some ignore the whole thing and use a time taken by their own scout. In deference to the players, NFLDraftScout.com uses the best verifiable - or listed - time from the combine unless it is conspicuously skewed from the other times, which happens when a hand timer has an itchy trigger finger on the stopwatch. However, the times are usually well-grouped so a general idea of the player's speed is easily attained.

perhaps you should read where it says there is an electronic and 2 hand held times for each run? Meaning throwing out slowest and fastest leaves you with 4 times.

 

[Peggy Starfish]

http://www.nfldraftscout.com/members/news/notes64.php (look for CJ Spiller note on 3/1)...

Many different 40 times will be reported over the next few days, with discrepancies as wide as a full tenth of a second like those for Spiller, so it's important to understand where they come from. The only listed times available during the event come from NFL Network and NFL.com, neither of which discloses how they arrive at the timed speeds. As Rob Rang noted in his blog this weekend, beware of any 40 time labeled as "official" from the combine. Those who participate in the 40 typically run twice, and on each run they are timed by two hand-held stopwatches and one electronic timer, which is actually initiated by hand on the player's first movement. Combine data put together for NFL teams by the National Football Scouting service, the private entity not owned by the league but which is actually in charge of running the event, includes all six of those times for each player, but no single official time. Teams and scouts don't receive that information until at least two weeks after the event. Team scouts and coaches have various approaches for getting the 40 time they use from those six timings. Some use averages. Some throw out the slowest and fastest and then average the rest. Some ignore the whole thing and use a time taken by their own scout. In deference to the players, NFLDraftScout.com uses the best verifiable - or listed - time from the combine unless it is conspicuously skewed from the other times, which happens when a hand timer has an itchy trigger finger on the stopwatch. However, the times are usually well-grouped so a general idea of the player's speed is easily attained.

perhaps you should read where it says there is an electronic and 2 hand held times for each run? Meaning throwing out slowest and fastest leaves you with 4 times.

 

[CalBear]

A man with one watch always knows what time it is. A man with two is never sure.

 

[kutta]

I think it's funny that geeks on a FF message board think they know what NFL scouts should and should not look at. Don't you think the NFL hosts the NFL combine so scouts can check out players in the ways that the scouts want to check them out? If the 40 was worthless, why would they waste days having players run it?

 

[awesomeness]

I think it's funny that geeks on a FF message board think they know what NFL scouts should and should not look at. Don't you think the NFL hosts the NFL combine so scouts can check out players in the ways that the scouts want to check them out? If the 40 was worthless, why would they waste days having players run it?

GMs allow it to happen cause they know it will result in Al Davis reaching in every round.