The Speed Factor
August 07, 2007 11:47 AM | General
August 7, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The forty yard dash time is probably the most overrated and misused measurement in football. We know most forty times are notoriously unreliable yet we continue to consume them like popcorn at a movie theater.
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| Junior running back Steve Slaton is considered one of the fastest players in college football.
Joe Sadlek/All-Pro Photography |
In fact we have become so consumed by speed that it sometimes blurs our thinking.
One of the biggest myths out there is that Southern teams are faster than Northern teams. Five years ago the online publication Slate conducted a study attempting to prove that there was a speed discrepancy between Southern and Northern schools. What it found was surprising: some Northern skill players were actually faster than their Southern counterparts.
Using forty yard dash times from the NFL Draft Combines, Internet college football researcher Casey Calder determined that Northern wide receivers on average ran the forty in 4.502 seconds while the Southern wide outs ran the forty in 4.548 seconds. Southern and Northern cornerbacks were about the same, 4.535 to 4.555 respectively.
Slate also compared the top high school sprinters in Michigan and Florida over a two-year period. Taking an average of the 10 fastest 100-meter times from both states, Slate found that Florida sprinters on average were slightly faster than Michigan’s, 10.77 seconds to 10.78, but the top two overall sprinters came from the Wolverine State. The two guys also wound up playing in the Big Ten, which has a reputation for being a notoriously slow football conference.
It has been said that West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez plays a Southern style of football in the North. The same was also said of Rodriguez’s WVU predecessors Jim Carlen and Bobby Bowden.
Players from the two SEC teams the Mountaineers have faced most recently, Georgia in the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl and Mississippi State last year in Starkville, each remarked that they had never had to tackle a duo as fast as quarterback Patrick White and running back Steve Slaton.
Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt famously stated at halftime of the 2005 West Virginia game that his team needed to “run faster” in order to keep up with the speedy Mountaineers.
Ironically, Rodriguez’s two fastest players are from different parts of the country – White from Alabama and Slaton from Pennsylvania. Rodriguez says everyone tries to recruit speed. The trick, of course, is trying to judge it on film.
“You can tell that sometimes on film and sometimes you’re just lucky when you sign them and see it in practice,” Rodriguez said. “Sometimes you’ve got to look who they’re running away from and who their competition is.”
Whenever Rodriguez watched tape of White and Slaton he noticed two commonalities: neither player ever got caught from behind.
“They have natural speed and competitive speed,” Rodriguez said. “You watch them on film and they never get caught. Never.
“Whenever they’re running in shorts they’re running faster and in pads they’re running faster when someone is chasing them.”
Rodriguez admits that this year’s team is probably his fastest although the majority of the team’s speediest players were also around last year.
“We’re a little faster on offense than maybe we were last year but it’s the same guys. A couple of the young guys are fast but they’re not as fast as Steve and Pat – they’re still the fastest guys we’ve got,” Rodriguez said.
The coach listed other players he’s had recently that were difficult to catch.
“Rasheed (Marshall) was pretty fast and Kay-Jay Harris was pretty fast,” Rodriguez noted. “We had a couple of other guys that were pretty fast. Team speed overall we’re probably quicker, especially on defense.”
Rodriguez isn’t one to put a stopwatch on his players and admits speed is often exaggerated.
“Darius Reynaud is pretty fast but he’s more explosive and quicker than he is fast. I don’t really go out there and time them in the forty. If you can make plays in space you probably can play,” Rodriguez said.
West Virginia has had some fast players in the past. Olympic sprint champion James Jett remains the fastest of the fast and although he had a nine-year NFL career, he was still more of a track guy playing football.
Bobby Bowden’s teams of the early 1970s had burners in Danny Buggs, Snake Blake, Marshall Mills, Kerry Marbury and Artie Owens. Phil Elmassian once told me the Bowden teams of that time were considered second only to Arizona State in overall team speed.
Former Bowden assistant coach Garrett Ford believes it’s all relative, but admits the current crop of West Virginia players is must faster.
“These guys can run,” Ford said.
Others couldn’t run quite as fast but that didn’t stop them from having great football careers. Both Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith were said to run the forty in the 4.6-to-4.7 range.
“Speed is not the only thing. You want to see guys make plays,” Rodriguez said. “Obviously if you are recruiting a guy to play at this level, you want him to be a dominant player in high school – not just a good player. But the speed factor … everybody wants it.
And coaches are looking everywhere to get it.
