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How important are 40 times?
During the months of January, February and March each year, the NFL goes on tour. League talent evaluators travel from location to location like a flock of Grateful Dead followers, anxious to thoroughly examine every college prospect on display.
Some travel by bus, some by plane. Some pack heavy and some pack light. But one item everyone in the traveling circus is sure to have is a stopwatch. Some even bring two.
That’s because the NFL is obsessed with speed — and for good reason. The difference between a 4.4 and a 4.5 in the 40-yard dash could be the difference as to whether a wide receiver clears the corner on an end-around, or whether a running back makes his way through a crease in the offensive line before it closes. As far as the scouts are concerned, speed can go a long way in determining whether your team is playing football in January or watching games on television instead.
“You field a team of good football players that can’t run, and you’re going to lose,” said legendary front office executive Ron Wolf, who helped build the lightning-fast Raiders of the 1960s and 70s and the Packers of the 1990s.
“In my 38 years in the business, the more I became familiar with the 40-yard time, the better I felt about a particular player,” said Wolf, now retired. “It’s not everything, but it’s a very, very valuable tool.”
Gil Brandt agrees. Brandt also built a winner with speed during his 29 years as personnel director for Dallas . For Brandt, comparing 40-yard dash times was an easy way to separate talent.
“Let’s say there are two wide receivers that, ability-wise, look alike,” said Brandt. “If one runs a 4.43 and the other runs a 4.58 that was the tie-breaker for (the Cowboys).”
But scouting isn’t always that cut and dry. At the NFL Combine, held in late February in Indianapolis where every top-level prospect works out for every upper-level executive in the business, the marquee attraction during the weekend is the 40-yard dash. Prospects know that if they run well they’ll improve their stock. Run slow and millions of dollars may fall from their pockets.
Based on that one drill, scouts often make up their minds about a guy in a matter of one one-hundredth of a second. Sometimes, however, the 40 time doesn’t say as much about a particular player as scouts would like it to because, as Brandt points out, “some players carry a uniform better than others.”
Take Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Anquan Boldin for example. At Florida State , Boldin earned a reputation as one of the nation’s deadliest weapons. He led his squad in receiving and touchdowns as a junior in 2002, and had shown everything on game film that scouts tend to look for. But when he recorded times above 4.7 in the 40-yard dash at the combine, a time well below NFL standards for a wide receiver, Boldin paid the price. Arizona picked him up midway through the second round of the 2003 NFL Draft after five other wide receivers had been selected, including Bryant Johnson, who went to Arizona in round one.
Boldin proved the critics wrong and went on to earn AP Offensive Rookie of the Year honors after catching 101 passes for 1,377 yards.
“I think the testing is overrated. I think the bottom line should be what you did on the film,” said Boldin. “All of the 40 times, all of the shuttles, that doesn’t mean much to me. If you put me on a field, no matter who you put in front of me, I’m going to perform. And I had the film to back that up.”
“Boldin’s times at the combine were not good,” said Brandt, “so consequently people forgot that he caught 13 touchdowns and that he was the best all-purpose receiver in the state of Florida .”
That same year, the AP Defensive Rookie of the Year, Terrell Suggs, didn’t run fast for scouts, either. At Arizona State in the fall of 2002, Suggs collected an NCAA-record 24 sacks. But at 6-3, 262 pounds, Suggs was considered too small to be a three-down defensive end. And because he ran a disappointing 4.8 in the 40-yard dash during a private workout that March, Suggs was considered too slow to drop back in coverage as an outside linebacker in the 4-3. Suggs was a “tweaner,” a guy who didn’t belong at any particular position; at least that’s how his measurable qualities sized him up.
For Suggs, those few hundredths of a second damaged him where it hurts the most. It was the difference of just five to seven spots in the first round, but any agent can tell you that dropping from Nos. 3 to 5, where Suggs was initially projected, to No. 10 is a difference of millions of dollars.
The end result turned out to be in Suggs’ best interests. He was drafted by Baltimore , which at the time was one of only a few teams in the league to employ a 3-4 defense, a scheme that fit Suggs’ abilities. Like Boldin, Suggs has proven the neysayers wrong about the speed issue and in just two seasons has recorded 22.5 sacks for the Ravens. When this year’s crop of college prospects were getting ready for Indianapolis , Suggs was returning from his first Pro Bowl in Honolulu.
Wolf and Brandt acknowledge it’s not a perfect system. After all, there is a Boldin and a Suggs in every draft. But the few that slip between the cracks do not warrant a change in the system.
“You can always point out the exceptions to the rules,” said Wolf. “I know Cris Carter didn’t have a really good 40 time and he was an exceptional player. But I do believe that the 40 has survived the test of time.”
Wolf points out that scouts know how fast Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown ran the 40 (4.4) and that Philadelphia’s bruising fullback from the 1940s, Steve van Buren, was rumored to have put up an excellent 40 time (4.5) for a ballcarrier his size. “You have this backlog of information and it’s all based on a 40 time,” said Wolf, “and that helps you. That’s something you know and it helps you compare.”
Said Brandt, “When you time people, you’re trying to find a way, percentage-wise, to make a better choice. If player A runs 4.45 and player B runs 4.62, which one would you rather have? There are going to be occasions when player B turns out to be the better football player. All you’re trying to do when you time people is use past history to help determine who has a better chance of being successful.”
Perhaps, better than anyone, Hall of Fame wide receiver Steve Largent put it best. Largent, who left the game with more catches, more yards, and more receiving touchdowns than any player to come before him, was considered too small and too slow when he entered the league in 1976. He was drafted in the fourth round by Houston and shortly thereafter was shipped to Seattle for a future eighth round selection.
“Scouting is two parts science, one part art,” said Largent. “The science part everybody gets — height, weight, speed, and so on and so forth. But the one part that is always hard to measure is the art, and that has to do with competitiveness, heart, and knowledge of the game. That’s the piece of the puzzle that everybody wishes was a science but it’s really not.”
