Bad Math: Your favorite RB ran a slow 40, now what?

In any scientific field, it’s important to use evidence you have observed to create a reasonable hypothesis, from which you can gather further evidence to develop a provable theory, and if you’re diligent enough and spend enough time analyzing your data you can come to a repeatable conclusion. It is rarely that clear-cut, however, and sometimes you’re left with enough data to point out a noticeable trend, but not enough to have a provable theory that you can repeat with additional data. We could throw out the data, or we could just talk about it because it’s neat.

Bad Math is a new series where I’m going to do exactly that. Sometimes I notice neat little trends that aren’t necessarily projective, and they’re certainly not groundbreaking, but they’re fun and interesting enough to shine a light on so we’re going to do that.

I was interviewed recently and talked a bit about Notre Dame running back Audric Estimé. Estimé is a highly regarding running back prospect, but he also ran a pretty awful 4.71 at the Combine. We talked a bit about how I felt a team could still find significant value with a player like him because his play style didn’t rely on speed. That got me thinking: How many players with a 4.7 or worse 40 yard dash became quality NFL rushers, and did they share any common traits with each other, and does Estimé have the same type of skills?

I set the bar fairly low in terms of what would qualify as a ‘Qualify NFL RB’ and looked at players who had at least one 750 yard rushing season. There weren’t many players with this type of profile that fit that bill, with no one in the last decade, only two in the last 20 years, and only seven in thee last thirty years. This all included the following players and how many seasons they hit that mark:

Player	Seasons	Teams
Stevan Ridley	2	Patriots
LeGarrette Blount	4	2 Bucs, 2 Pats, 1 Eagles
Marcel Shipp	2	Cardinals
Troy Hambrick	1	Cowboys
Olandis Gary	1	Broncos
Priest Holmes	5	1 Ravens, 4 Chiefs
Fred Lane	1	Panthers

Now, that might seem that speed doesn’t matter, I mean look at these guys! Priest Holmes was a multiple All Pro! To add some context here, since 1994 there have been 151 running backs who’ve hit at least 750 yards rushing at least once and recorded a 40 yard dash. Players who ran 4.7 or worse make up only 4.6% of that bunch, so it’s not a common occurrence.

Now, that isn’t super encouraging, but I found something of interest immediately once I started looking into what might tie these players together. 5 of 7 were larger than average backs, with Holmes and Lane being shorter backs with above average weight. We’re working with a small set of data but that seemed notable at least.

Marcel Shipp skipped agility drills, and Hambrick didn’t time well in agilities, but the other five? All tested very well in the shuttle, cone, or both. All but Shipp, who didn’t test in both explosion drills, tested above average to great in the vertical, broad jump, or both. Again, this is a very small dataset, but it feels notable that we’d have such a small success group to begin with with a majority of them sharing the same relative size and athletic makeup.

This would seem to show that players who score poorly for speed can still find NFL success if they’re explosive and quick, not necessarily elite in either of those areas, but at least pretty good.

Player	Ht	Wt	40 Time (over 4.7)	Vertical RAS	Broad RAS	Shuttle RAS	Cone RAS
Stevan Ridley	5112	225	4.73	7.91	6.40	6.25	9.50
LeGarrette Blount	6004	241	4.74	6.82	5.80	1.20	8.90
Marcel Shipp	5105	222	4.71	4.49
Troy Hambrick	6001	237	4.7	7.03	6.95	1.51	2.50
Olandis Gary	6010	216	4.71	6.48	5.85	8.18	7.57
Priest Holmes	5087	213	4.73	5.53	5.27	8.19	5.45
Fred Lane	5095	209	4.75	3.27	6.02	7.47	6.36

This kind of trend is certainly more than a coincidence, but it’s not enough to be a repeatable trend that we can expect to find yearly examples of.

How does Estimé fit into this? He skipped the agility drills, so unfortunately we can’t gauge his talents there, but he scored better in explosiveness than anyone on this list. It may not be likely that he would have scored well in agility drills, but it’s likely enough that he’d be worth considering if you think his style of running falls into a similar realm as some of the guys listed. His explosiveness is very promising, however, as we’ve already looked into how important explosiveness can be to RB success in the NFL.

There have been over 2,200 RB prospects added to the RAS database in the last 30 years from 1994 to 2023. Of those, only 6 have the same combination of size, poor timed speed, and elite tier explosiveness. That wouldn’t include anyone from the above success group, as none of them scored elite for explosiveness, but it goes to show just how rare that combination of traits is, even when we open it up a bit (Weight over 220, Vert over 34, Broad over 1002, 40 over 4.7).

There isn’t really a conclusion here, that’s the fun of a concept like Bad Math. I think there’s some neat connections to be made with a very specific type of NFL running back that occasionally finds some success in the NFL, and how that lines up with a very rare type of athletic profile in Audric Estimé. I think there’s a lot of these microtrends in the thousands of players we have collected data for, and I’ll certainly be exploring more of them in the future.