Draft the three fastest players in NFL history

Hawkeye0202 said:

Tough but here are my three......

• Bob Hayes
• Deion Sanders
• Darrell Green

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Johnson not in the list?

DFWJC said:

Had to get all the way down to #13 before we could find a "real and official" 40 time. Actually at the combine with equal verifiable conditions and unbiased timers

All the rest before were on campus, usually bogus times. Add .05 to .15 to those times almost 100% of the time.

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My son used to go to these football camps where they would time prospects. The coaches would get together bounce a time off each other. "What'd you get? What was your time?" Then they'd estimate a time.
I would never trust a hand-held timer, whether digital or non-digital.
The only way to take an accurate 40 time is the way it's set up at a track meet or at the Combine.

quickccc said:

if they were a 'lot older " then that's all the more reason why Prime Time should have met the challenge - and beat the challenge.
Deion never invited ? NBC wouldn't want Prime Time whose persona and charisma surely would have added to viewing audience ?

Or could it have been Prime was so worried about being showed up, ..or he just wasn't interested in the event ?
These other NFL contestants were eagerly confident to compete and contest to be NFL's fastest Man, so why was Deion any different ?

I believe the NBC does the Fastest Man Contest event in the offseason, not during the NFL season.
Why in the world would NBC do otherwise ?

Now what other excuse(s) would Deion have next?

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Two things.. First Deion absolutely was not interested in the event. Remember he spent several of his off seasons playing for the Braves and Reds. He was able to collect 2-3 million dollars a year playing baseball so whatever the prize was for the fastest man competition was pocket change for him. Even though the prize money is approaching a million bucks these last several years.. back then it was like 20-25 thousand. And Deion wasn't risking his 2 million a year job playing baseball for no measly 25 G's. If he pulled a hammie doing that crap he probably foreits any remaining salary from the baseball team. All those "guaranteed" contracts have outs in them for you doing stupid stuff during the offseason let alone IN season.

quickccc said:

I've seen Darrell Green flat out jet- fetched both Dorsett and Dickerson from behind, but i haven't see his one vs Hershel Walker.

i don't ever recall Dickerson being officially recorded as a 4.2 guy coming into the NFL in 1983.
He was a state champ in 100 meters at track n field in high school.
But from what i've read or heard him he's never been officially being timed as that 40 time fast, heading into the NFL.

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Dickerson was never that fast .. at least not in the 40. He was a long strider who could really cook once he got going but I don't think he was ever breaking 4.3 in the 40. I do know this.. One day during a lull in the sports calendar I watched one of them cockamamie competitions one day on ESPN called "The World's fastest athlete." It featured what it purported to be two of the fastest competitors from each of the 4 major (non-ice) sports. Baseball, football, basketball and track and field. They had them compete against each other in speed tests specific to their sports. They ran the bases home to home, they ran baseline to baseline and back for hoops, they ran 100 meters on the track and they ran the 40 yard dash on the football field. The competitors were I think Tim Raines and Devon White from baseball.. Darryl Green and Eric Dickerson represented football while Mark Weatherspoon and some other dude I can't remember represented track and field. I don't remember the basketballers probably because they got smoked in all the events. Not unexpectedly the track guys wiped the floor with everybody in the 100 meters. What WAS surprising was how slow the times were. Nobody broke 10.5 and Green and Dickerson struggled to break 11.0. Green easily won the 40 yard dash but as I recall one of the baseballers, either Raines or White beat Dickerson. Green's winning time was 4.45-ish. Raines and White dominated the basepath running but Green recorded a respectable time at that. Green also won the baseline to baseline event on the basketball court which clinched the overall title for him. Don't quote me on any of this as it is all from memory from over 30 years ago. But I do definitely remember that Green won the overall competition but Dickerson was fairly unimpressive IMHO.

conner01 said:

40 times today at the combine are very accurate
Back in the day they were not
No one with a stop watch can accurately time a guy down to the tenth of a second
The 3 fastest guys to ever play in the nfl wouldn’t likely be the best really fast players to play
But one thing that is obvious is todays athletes as a whole are faster than those for decades ago
And the fastest official times aren’t always great players
There really is no way to know hype from fact with most of the times from years ago
Some guys play faster than they time also

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A kid from our HS went to Raiders camp and ran a 4.19. Never played, but he could scoot.

xwalker said:

I still remember a game against the Raiders when they tried to go deep on Deion.
- The Raiders had Olympic Gold Metal winner James Jett at WR.
- Deion was faster than Jett by a wide margin.
- Deion after the game expressed that he felt disrespected that the Raiders would even try going deep on him.

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I was not a Deion fan prior to his time in Dallas. I vividly remember this play. Deion let him get by him & from the TV angle it looked to be a sure fire completion for a huge gain or TD when QB let it go. Deion pulled a road runner, closed the gap in a flash and took the ball off the guys helmet\shoulder. One of the many mind blowing plays he made that forced me to respect his game. If I recall correctly, the play seemed to leave the Raiders in a state of disbelief and they just sorta went thru the motions the rest of the game.
I agree, I don't think anyone has ever been faster on a football field. It was like he had unlimited gears and could be as fast as he wanted to be in any given circumstance.

MarcusRock said:

I like how Deangelo Hall picked himself.

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and he wasn't fast ....

Hawkeye0202 said:

Tough but here are my three......

• Bob Hayes
• Deion Sanders
• Darrell Green

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First time I've ever seen Walter Payton on this kind of list. Was he a track guy?

KJJ said:

According to NFL films the three fastest players in NFL history were Bob Hayes, Darrell Green and Bo Jackson. Green and Jackson had 40 times under 4.2. Not sure any NFL player was faster in pads than Darrell Green. He chased down Tony Dorsett, Eric Dickerson and Herschel Walker. Dickerson and Walker had 40 times of 4.24 and 4.25. Tony Dorsett claimed he never ran under 4.3.

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Green is one of my all time favorite players even though he played for the "unnamed". He forced me to respect his game with unbelievable plays & won the offseason competitions they had amongst athletes. I remember him beating Herschel at least a couple times in the 40. I think H might take him in the 100 but Green was elite in the 40 and his on field play showed his great change of direction speed as well.

atlantacowboy said:

First time I've ever seen Walter Payton on this kind of list. Was he a track guy?

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No.. whomever put his name in there was either trying to be funny or is just horribly misinformed.

McKDaddy said:

Green is one of my all time favorite players even though he played for the "unnamed". He forced me to respect his game with unbelievable plays & won the offseason competitions they had amongst athletes. I remember him beating Herschel at least a couple times in the 40. I think H might take him in the 100 but Green was elite in the 40 and his on field play showed his great change of direction speed as well.

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What you probably remember is Green beating Herschel in the 60 which was the distance they use in the NFL's fastest man competition. Herschel was fast but I don't think he was ever quite as fast as Darryl Green over any distance. Green's PR in the 100 meters was a good half a second faster than Herschel's and they were in college around the same time. Green was an all time great player and obviously one of the 10 or 15 fastest people ever to play the game. But he never could stop Michael Irvin! LOL!

kskboys said:

A kid from our HS went to Raiders camp and ran a 4.19. Never played, but he could scoot.

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It’s pretty amazing the size, speed and strength of todays athletes
I met Bob Lilly once and talked to him about the sizes of players today and how so many guys are over 300 lbs and how few there were in his day
And these 300lb guys are athletic
Look at Micah who is a guy with a LB body and CB speed

conner01 said:

It’s pretty amazing the size, speed and strength of todays athletes
I met Bob Lilly once and talked to him about the sizes of players today and how so many guys are over 300 lbs and how few there were in his day
And these 300lb guys are athletic
Look at Micah who is a guy with a LB body and CB speed

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In 1970, Micah would be a DT. lol

atlantacowboy said:

In 1970, Micah would be a DT. lol

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Really

atlantacowboy said:

In 1970, Micah would be a DT. lol

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Not necessarily. Guys like Jim Brown were huge for his time.. 6'3" 235, probably equivalent in size to the average linemen of his day yet managed to be identified as athletic enough to tote the rock. And that was in the 50's. I expect coaches in the 70's would have seen a 6'3" 240 pound guy who runs 4.4 like Micah and lined him up at tailback and hand him the ball 30 times a game. No coach worth his salt would ever have wasted that kind of speed and athleticism on the line.

CowboysFaninHouston said:

Johnson not in the list?

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Sorry, Ben Johnson never played NFL football ...

RonnieT24 said:

Not necessarily. Guys like Jim Brown were huge for his time.. 6'3" 235, probably equivalent in size to the average linemen of his day yet managed to be identified as athletic enough to tote the rock. And that was in the 50's. I expect coaches in the 70's would have seen a 6'3" 240 pound guy who runs 4.4 like Micah and lined him up at tailback and hand him the ball 30 times a game. No coach worth his salt would ever have wasted that kind of speed and athleticism on the line.

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I wonder who were supposedly the " fast-speed ' guys- in the 60's and very early 70's - AFL- NFL merger era ?
Bullet Bob Hayes and OJ Simpson are only ones that come to my mind.
i think Cliff Branch eventually came in the mid-70's

But Micah probably wouldn’t been doing all the training, lifting and nutrition programs since an early age back in them days. So his physique probably have been different.

No idea how accurate Alexander Wright's 4.07/40 time was, but he was ridiculously fast. He was just never good enough to show off that speed on many occasions.

Willie Gault
Darrell Green
Deion Sanders

RonnieT24 said:

What you probably remember is Green beating Herschel in the 60 which was the distance they use in the NFL's fastest man competition.

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No, it wasn't limited to NFL. Maybe it was Superstars which it lists Herschel as winning twice. Maybe it was a 60 yard race as I seem to remember that Herschel was gaining on him and the announcers talking about what the results might be over longer distances.

Either way, I loved Herschel and wanted him to win the fastest man title but Green was just too explosive.