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Speed at corner

twes.305 said:
I was just making an educated guess on the LB base off of hope and what they should be, and I made a mistake on the calculations, last year average CB was 4.49, 4.5 if you round up, S 4.52 at the combine.
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Back in the late '80's, I looked at the claimed 40 times for our DLs and LBs. I recall that our DEs were often faster than our LBs. Rod Carter, Randy Shannon, George Mira, Jr. and Bernard Clark we're not particularly fast. They were just good, solid, well coached LBs. I have a recollection if seeing times like 4.8 for some of our LBs. If you can find a 1987 or so media guide look them up.
 
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It’s a disease we’ve had since the Shammin daze.

Preference for big slow corners with no hip or closing speed.
 
Best time I'm seeing for Tory Mitchell is 10.31 apparently non-wind aided. He was perhaps the fastest HS kid in the country his senior year. I'm not sure he would've been a corner at UM. Always listed as a safety.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1999-05-29/sports/9905290210_1_buzz-texas-meters-record

We might increase our chances to recruit speed if we go back more heavily into Texas. Lot of exceptional track performers in Texas. The kids there seem more interested in Miami than some of the Florida divas who are so enamored of the SEC.
 
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Gatorhater said:
JJ had speed camp. He disagrees. I’m slow and always have been but JJ seemed to think it could be, tried and his teams never lacked speed. I’ll stick with him.
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JJ's speed camp was to find guys with speed, not teach it. In fact, he often sated he recruited for speed and intelligence because they were the two things that can't be taught.
 
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maurice3p said:
How many 4.6’s dropped to 4.4’s? I need evidence
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I know for a fact....the Suckeyes always improve times by doing sparq speed training..( bandwork) go look at some of their recent combine numbers.... sparq training is big-time these days....lots of pro skill players do it every off-season as well...
 
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CANEMC said:
DVD and Brandon Harris were the last starting DBs on the UM track team I believe. El Chapo should push more of them to run track in the winter/spring. Even if they don't run in meets, they'll get faster.
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Artie Burns
 
DMoney said:
I hear you but I get jealous looking at a team like Ohio State. They are pumping out 6'0 corners running 4.3-4.4 every year.
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I definitely feel you on the frustration, but if we won a title within the last 5 years, had double digit wins every year, played in front of 106,000 or whatever it is now, and had ginormous bags to drop because of endless resources and alumni, Miami would be too. I hate them almost much as any team I'm not kissing their asses in any way, I'm just saying they have HUGE built in advantages that Miami doesn't to get those kids.
 
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It’s important to note in the speed discussion, that elite speed is a separate issue from good speed for starting unit purposes. 4.5 40s is fine across your DBs. Fine across your WRs. BUT, having a guy on either side of the ball who can go sub 4.4 can really change things. It pressures coverage, it changes special teams, it requires the other team to account for guys who they can’t match up with. It isn’t required but it’s a valuable tool to have. And it’s not purely a 40 or 100 m issue. It’s quickness also. Reggie Bush was quicker then fast. Barry Sanders too.
 
I'd like to go the Nigel Bethel route once every cycle. Take a raw athlete that's got huge potential at cb and let Rumph develop him over a couple years. We've got a teacher at cb coach and we need to utilize it. Lots of athletes we never heard of make it to the NFL yearly at DB. Find them and coach em up.

This is not something to be relied upon cause we missed all the other prospects. It's a supplement and means to get more athleticism in the secondary. Just one per cycle is good.
 
NorthEastCane said:
JJ's speed camp was to find guys with speed, not teach it. In fact, he often sated he recruited for speed and intelligence because they were the two things that can't be taught.
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Exactly. You cannot teach someone speed. When you hear about players improving 40 times it's because they've been coached to properly run a 40 yard dash as efficiently as possible. It really has no effect on their football speed. If you could actually make slow guys faster, every single football coach from pop Warner all the way to the NFL would be doing it. You're either fast or you're not. Coaching someone to properly run track is not making them a faster football player.
 
DTP said:
Exactly. You cannot teach someone speed. When you hear about players improving 40 times it's because they've been coached to properly run a 40 yard dash as efficiently as possible. It really has no effect on their football speed. If you could actually make slow guys faster, every single football coach from pop Warner all the way to the NFL would be doing it. You're either fast or you're not. Coaching someone to properly run track is not making them a faster football player.
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You can coach and train speed. Others here have pointed it out. The Russians in fact were really good at it. They used overspeed training (basically, tie a guy to the back of a car and start driving a bit faster than he can run). It actually got the body to learn to exceed what it essentially believed to be its neurological and muscular limits. You cannot change the ratio of quick twitch muscles in a person, but you can improve physical performance in many ways, speed, strength, reaction time, explosiveness, endurance, agility, etc.
 
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Tetragrammaton Cane said:
THIS^^^is ignorant. Say it as many times as you like but it won’t change the truth. It’s so wrong that it seems as if you’re just trying to establish a level of misinformation that no one else can top. Congratulations, you’ve succeeded.

“Speed” can be taught. Of course it’s relative but it absolutely can be taught. And, I’m specifically not talking about the “… coached to properly run a 40 yard dash as efficiently as possible”. Again, what you’ve written is wrong. Speed (and quickness) are forms of functional strength. And no one is saying that you can’t coach someone to be stronger.

In fact, for those who CAN teach speed (and also for those who learn it), it’s a matter of getting the athlete to do what some athletes just seem to have figured out intuitively.) Other times it’s conceptual, and with proper drills and strength training (proprioception etc) athletes absolutely can be “re-wired”.

What is the starting point? Learning how to properly apply force. Period. And, yes, that applies in conditions that have nothing to do with going in a straight line. Moving a WR/DB from 4.7 to 4.5 should ALMOST be a standard.


DING! DING! DING! THIS^^^

In the spectrum of “speed” … only SOME of the “combine lasered sub-4.35-ishes” (combine timing is still bs, but that’s for another conversation) have a prayer of being a national class/Olympic sprinter type. These guys are special! They move different! It’s visible. And, what they do … I don’t believe it can be taught.

4.4 is fast. 4.5 is still fast. And 4.6 - in certain cases - is fast enough. These guys are different types of athletes than the “combine lasered sub-4.35-ishes” BUT it can be taught.

But only person making a “Barry Sanders-type” is the one who made everyone else. Or, just pick more talented parents.
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I wasnt even going to mention sanders because using him as an analogy almost blows up the argument.

I think the best example of footbal speed was actually devin hester, who was fast but not that fast. But he could sense / feel the entire field around him, sense where seams would emerge, see whose motion would cause it, and instinctively moderate his own speed then accelerate to blow through holes he effectively created without anyone really understanding what he was doing.

People talk about it like it was vision, as if someone else with the same speed, on the same field, would have the potential to experience the same holes. I don’t think it was. Hester would subtlly accelerate and decelerate to allow people around him to get to a place where he knew they couldnt recover when he changed speeds again. He did it on the fly, without thinking about it. And he did it gracefully, without giving easy visual clues to his changes so it was hard for defenders to read. There is a reason he was the best return man ever, and it wasnt his 4.4 speed.

The guy who should be the gold standard for football speed training was jerry rice. He was not at all fast. Probably 4.6. But he was football fast because he had zero wasted motion, ran crisp, beautiful routes, and took perfect angles with the ball. He knew just how to seal off faster guys with angles, cuts and lean. And he knew where defenders were, and accounted for them. He rarely ever got caught from behind.
 
Tetragrammaton Cane said:
Exactly!

Another “like” that who may have been the best pure athlete I’ve ever seen is Deion Sanders. Deion joined the track team his last year in Tallahassee, while playing baseball, just to help their relay qualify and he qualified for the finals of the NCAA 100M. That’s just not done. You just don’t show up and run sub-10.30. Unprecedented talent.
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Deion was unbelievably fast and athletic. He was not world class, but right off that. But it translated so well athletically. I would guess if he really trained track he could have been a marginal olympic level athlete, but he wasn’t a sub-10 guy, imo. Darrell Green was faster, and did have world class speed in the 100. But i believe Deion was noticeably faster than Green in the 40.
 
Gatorhater said:
We use to teach speed with JJ. Speed camp and sand pits. I remember OLBs with 4.3 and 4.4 speed in the day. We will never be back until the speed is back.
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Just for the record, there have been 3 linebackers running that fast at the nfl combine in the last 5 years combined. Griffin, Attachou and something called a Yawin Smallwood.
 
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cowboycane said:
Just for the record, there have been 3 linebackers running that fast at the nfl combine in the last 5 years combined. Griffin, Attachou and something called a Yawin Smallwood.
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Curious for others’s views on this: In all the years of UM football, iirc the only legit 4.4 range Lbs we have had were willie williams, darrin smith and maybe dj williams. T gooden and t russell were just off that. Armstead was close before injury, but probably a legit 4.5 guy.
 
DMoney said:
Where is it?

I really like the guys we have on the roster, but aside from Couch and Bethel they aren’t burners. We need to inject some speed.

The local crop doesn’t seem to have the answer. Gray is running 4.8. Harrell had a PR of 11.76 in the 100M last year. Stanley is quicker than fast.

I hope somebody shows some juice at the Opening on Sunday.
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Well, we have Chauncey Gardner on the track team who used to play CB in HS....any chance we can flip him back to football?
 
Tetragrammaton Cane said:
Again, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. I’m actually surprised someone upvoted you; which is to say that they know less than you do - so that should be comforting to you.

Speed IS taught. How do you think athletes get faster? Asafa Powell was 10.50 at 19 and *** was 10.56 at 18; their career bests are 9.72 and 9.69, respectively.

Barry Sanders took two tenths (.20) off of his 40 in college.

If a team’s players are not getting faster, a coach might want to look at his S&C program.
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Your gonna end up confusing these dudes. Guys can work on getting faster by working on technique, getting stronger etc. but you have to have something to work with. You can't make a 11.5 max guy into a 10.5. He just doesn't have it in him.. Otherwise you'd have 1000 Asafa Powells if you could literally reach a guy to be fast.
 
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