This time every year, fans and media are incredibly surprised by some 40 yard dash times at the NFL combine. If this was the 80’s or 90’s I’d get it, but now? All you need is a little Google-fu and you can find official measurements and electronic 40 times from high school camps. The only real surprise is the occasional player that weighs less, runs slower, and doesn’t jump as high as they did 5 years prior to getting drafted (looking at you former Heisman winner Derrick Henry). The 2018 NFL combine saw 3 former Penn State guys light up the combine (Saquon Barkley, Troy Apke, and Mike Gesicki). This lead to a lot of regional and national sportswriters lauding PSU’s strength and conditioning. The problem? Barkley was nearly 210 and running in the 4.4s in high school. Apke’s 4.34 hilariously impressed Deion Sanders due in large part due to his melanin deficiency, but a fast 40 shouldn’t be a surprise for Apke who was a 10.8 100 m track guy in high school. There isn’t a perfect correlation between 100 m and 40 yd dash times, but former track guys tend to perform well in the 40. To put things in perspective a little, Chris Johnson and Devin Hester ran 10.66 and 10.62, respectively, in high school. After Barkley and Apke, a lot of people freaked out when Mike Gesicki jumped 41.5 inches as a 247 lb TE. In high school? Gesicki had a vertical leap of 40 inches at a PSU summer camp before receiving a scholarship offer.
Does Penn State have a good strength and conditioning program? Probably. Barkley did put on weight and get a little faster (though he was a competitive weightlifter already before PSU). Maybe Apke got a little faster? Gesicki did jump 1 inch higher. But none of these guys saw radical transformation in size, strength, or speed even after players spent months training with professionals to maximize mechanics and combine performance. And some of those HS times/measurements were outside on a cold Saturday morning in January performed by athletes who had never run track, so improved 40 times might not even be related to increased speed but instead conditions or increased proficiency in running 40 yards starting from a track position.
A sample of 22 guys that took part in the 2018 combine (limited by guys that had both reliable testing in HS and participated fully in the combine last year) highlights some general trends. The average player added 15 pounds from high school to the NFL combine, likely resulting in greater strength. The running and jumping portion tells a different story, as players got an average of 0.04 s faster and decreased their vertical jump by just over 1 inch.
Some guys do put on a lot of weight in college (2018 top-5 pick Bradley Chubb was listed at 225 lbs in high school but was 269 at the NFL combine), and other guys drop bad weight (Daron Payne checked in at 348 lbs at The Opening but a svelte 311 in Indy). In these cases, its expected that Chubb got significantly stronger, and we know that Payne got faster (5.29 → 4.95). The readily available data for HS players is largely limited to top prospects as 4 and 5 star recruits generally attend more camps and have more reliable data than the 2 and 3 star kids. The 4 and 5 star guys are also more physically developed on average, as supported by minimal physical improvement at the college level. The lesser recruited 2 and 3 star guys are probably more likely to be late bloomers that drastically change their bodies in college and morph from lightly recruited HS players to NFL studs (see previous Bradley Chubb example).
Not everybody has reliable measurables from high school, so analysis of testing performance of high school vs NFL combine athletes is admittedly a bit limited.. Having said that, there is enough data out there to get a good feel for some trends and baseline expectation. On average, players do improve physically from high school to the NFL, but the major change that occurs frequently is weight related, as guys mature and fill out their frame (or overweight players drop down to a good playing weight). For the most part, guys can run and jump prior to setting foot in a college weight room, and the famed college strength and conditioning program usually does little to nothing in terms of increasing speed and explosiveness. This isn’t necessarily an indictment of these programs. The more likely conclusion is that players are well developed physically throughout high school and have generally reached a near peak physical level in many aspects. If you happen to find testing numbers from kids as they progress through high school, it’s not uncommon at all to see a kid grow a few inches, put on 30 pounds, and run 0.2 or 0.3 faster 40 times. By the time top recruits get to college most of these guys are fairly developed physically. If NFL people paid attention to football before the combine maybe we wouldn’t have this problem...
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