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Post by coach79 on Feb 10, 2007 15:29:42 GMT -6
I am watching the Pro Bowl Skills Competition. They did an interview with Jerome Mathis, they asked him if they was a difference between football speed and pure speed. I feel there is a big difference because football spped isn't the same for every player.
Receiver's gotta be fast and quick fo rthe cuts and the deep routed.
OL gotta have a fast first 3 steps but not straight ahead speed.
LB gotta have good lateral speed and closing speed.
By that i think there is a big difference between "Football Speed and Pure Speed" I guess what i am asking is "What do you guys think?".
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Post by wildcat on Feb 10, 2007 15:43:56 GMT -6
There's a reason that few Olympic sprinters who got a try-out with an NFL team had any kind of career.
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Post by jjkuenzel on Feb 10, 2007 16:43:11 GMT -6
Football speed is having a burst and being able to get at top speed out of cuts and from a stationary position.
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Post by spreadattack on Feb 10, 2007 16:43:48 GMT -6
Football just takes a lot of skills. It's one of the same reasons that the 40 may or may not have much merit, when do guys run 40 yard dashes?
To the extent that having "pure speed" or "track speed" serves as a proxy for being a good athlete in general, then sure. But the lesson is not that having pure speed doesn't "translate," it just means that football requires a great many skills, while being a track guy requires that you be exceptional at a few skills. Olympic track athletes are in the top 1/2 of 1% regarding their straight ahead explosion, body control, and pure footspeed. Football players can make due being not nearly so fast in those categories, but they must be developed in many, many others.
Even receivers have to deal with a lot of starts and stops, shiftiness, body control, sharp cuts, HANDS, dealing with jams, upper body strength, jumping ability, and not to mention the mental aspect. There's just a wide variety of skills required. Although being exceptional at one or two (like a track guy) is usually strong evidence of being talented in the others, it is by no means a sure thing and often the guys with exceptional "pure speed" are discouraged by being relatively "average" at the other skills.
Football just requires you to be a bit of a jack of all trades. Jerry Rice was in the top 1% of nearly every receiver skill except "pure speed," but he still had plenty of that as well. So to me it's not that they don't "translate," they are just entirely distinct skills that are involved.
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Post by coach79 on Feb 10, 2007 17:03:46 GMT -6
Whatever happened to Justin Gatlin's tryout's with the Texans?
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Post by CVBears on Feb 12, 2007 14:41:03 GMT -6
It is just like there is a difference between being quick and being fast. I'll take quick every time.
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Post by dubber on Feb 12, 2007 17:30:41 GMT -6
Pads play a huge role too I think. Put a guy in a pair of shoulder pads and constricting football pants and see them slow. The guys who can learn how to handle that are the blazers on the football field. I imagine some track guys with lower 40 times are slower than some of their football counterparts in pads.
I think the same thing that goes for speed goes for hands too. How many kids have magnet hands during 7-on-7 drills in the summer, then when they put the helmet on look like an offensive guard?
Being able to move in and carry the weight of the equipment can distinguish natural athletes from football athletes
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