Pro day 40s are allllways lower. 4.59 is extremely slow.
Yeah they usually are due to hand held times or a fast surface. It also helps players to be in a familiar place, their comfort level. The players get a bit worn out waiting and talking with different people all day at the combine.
Here is an article talking about this somewhat from a former players point of view.
The 40-yard dash is a
moneymaker at the combine and that rule still applies at pro days where prospects light up the track. And some of those tracks are, well, faster than the turf inside of Lucas Oil Stadium. That's understood with pro scouts.
When I ran back at Iowa in 2000, the old-school AstroTurf in the indoor facility was super quick. Why? Because a summer storm ripped the roof off the bubble and blew that thing down the road somewhere. After that turf baked in the sun, it turned into stone and provided us with a lightning fast surface to test on. The result? My 40 time dropped a full tenth of a second -- from 4.49 at the combine to 4.39. We were flying on that stuff.
And don't forget: A lot of the 40 times you'll hear thrown around after pro days are from handheld stopwatches instead official electric times like at the combine. So when we see a guy rip of a low 4.3 or even a 4.2 on campus, it doesn't always speak to his true pro speed. I mean, that's what Deion Sanders ran. And his time was legit.
That said if it were not for pro days we wouldn't have any information to work with in regards to Mixon and other players who did not participate at the combine.
So as this is the only information one has for these players, does that make this information invalid because of supposedly faster times at the pro day?
If it is true that pro day times are faster, how much faster? Has anyone done a study on this?
Oaklahomas pro day.
Some key players here and their 40 times
DeDe Westbrook 4.38 and 4.34
Joe Mixon 4.43
Samjae Perine 4.59 and 4.62
If your belief is that these times are faster than they would be at the combine, by how much?
Samjae Perine ran a 4.66 and a 4.7 at the combine. So about a .07 second difference between the combine times and the pro day.
If that is the case then Joe Mixon should be considered to have a 4.5 and Westbrook ran a 4.45
For me the timeliness of the pro day in relation to the combine suggests to me that what Samjae said about having a soreness from lifting that caused him to run a bit slower than he normally would (times he tested at during preperation for the combine).
Samjae Perine was 233 lbs at the combine and the pro day was only a few days after the combine. So it is not like he lost 10 or more pounds in such a short time frame to run a faster time. I tend to think his explanation of of a strained muscle makes sense here and his times of 4.59 and 4.62 reflect more what I was expecting from him at that weight.
This isn't slow for a RB or a RB of his size. Many successful RB recently have a similar 4,6 40 times. For example
CJ Andeerson
Leveon Bell
Matt Jones
Mark Ingram
TJ Yeldon
Carlos Hyde
Alfred Morris
Legarratte Blount
Arian Foster
I would caution you against using a single timed number at one point of time as the sole determination of a players athleticism. It seems obvious that these times are very much in flux and can change from day to day week to week. It is difficult to say with any certainty what a players actual average times may be, because the data isn't tested frequently enough to know that.
The data is meant to support what you are seeing on film, not to replace it. If you think Perine looks slow then the data should confirm that opinion for you. If you are like me (and some others) and think Perine looked a lot faster in 2014 than 2016 that raises some other questions about why that is.
If it is because of Perine putting on extra weight, what happens if an NFL team asks him to play at 225 or 220 lbs? Does that mean he will get a bit faster? Say perhaps a 4.55 guy at that weight? Is that still too slow?