Has Zeke lost some of his speed?

[Toruk_Makto]

What i stated is facts Zeke would beat Barkley in a 100 meter race

I don't think the word "fact" means what you think it does.

 

[leeblair]

All that cash has to weigh a man down some.

 

[Verdict]

I will say the man earns his money and is a stud RB but I cant help but think he was faster in his rookie year. I just dont see zeke breaking alot of those long runs like he did his rookie year.

Most likely. I would say “yes”.

 

[Darthkuriboh]

#FatZeke

 

[Cowpolk]

I don't think the word "fact" means what you think it does.

There is an article that supports my comments find it read it

 

[Playmaker3128]

Every year we've said the same thing. Hell i remember this same thing being posted on this board last year. Then at the end of the year he has 1500 yards and 10 tds. Zeke will be fine.

 

[Toruk_Makto]

Every year we've said the same thing. Hell i remember this same thing being posted on this board last year. Then at the end of the year he has 1500 yards and 10 tds. Zeke will be fine.

The question isn't "will Zeke get enough volume to rush for a ton of yards?"

It was has he lost a step. He obviously has.

 

[keysersoze]

He sucks trade his fat lard for a 2nd rounder....

P.S. Lets see how the defense "Bites" on the PA after you don't have slow FAT Zeke to kick around....won't be pretty without him.

SMDH. Another dig at Dak. You just can’t control yourself huh? I know Dak’s recently improved play is just killing you from the inside out. Just man up and admit you were wrong. Damn!!!

 

[keysersoze]

Lol damn y’all wild. Saquan gets caught from behind nobody cares. Zeke does he gets questioned. I don’t remember the last time he had a wide open lane to take it to the house. When’s the last time he had a hole like Saquan did be us when Chido caught him? I challenge someone to show me the play from last year

 

[keysersoze]

Emmitt wasn't terribly fast either.

False. Almost every time Barkley is hit behind the LOS he’s tackled for a loss. Watch his film. His positive gains are all when he’s untouched and then picks up steam. And Saquon gets run down quite often himself.

 

[Toruk_Makto]

On that run Saquan hit the fastest speed of any ball carrier week 1.

Chido hit the fastest speed of anyone since 2017.

 

[stilltheguru]

On that run Saquan hit the fastest speed of any ball carrier week 1.

Chido hit the fastest speed of anyone since 2017.

How many ball carriers had a chance to pick up speed like that?

 

[keysersoze]

On that run Saquan hit the fastest speed of any ball carrier week 1.

Chido hit the fastest speed of anyone since 2017.

Was he run down or not? I couldn’t care less about the sport science aspect. This discussion is about Zeke not scoring on every long run. Neither does Barkley or any other running back for that matter.

 

[keysersoze]

On that run Saquan hit the fastest speed of any ball carrier week 1.

Chido hit the fastest speed of anyone since 2017.

It’s quite easy to do if you’re totally untouched. SMDH

 

[keysersoze]

Barkley, creates his own lanes??? Well, what is the on-line's duty?

I guess to be decoration. Lol. These guys are really dense.

 

[PoetTree]

What's interesting to me is that a lot people suggesting Zeke has lost his speed since 2016, despite becoming a superior athlete since then (this is not disputable with logic or facts), don't really seem to understand how football works, are offering decontextualized stats to support an incongruent argument, and ignoring the role circumstance plays in results.

Let's talk about Todd Gurley...


Here's an analysis I wrote a while back comparing Ezekiel & Gurley's speed:

https://cowboyszone.com/threads/on-...sight-into-ezekiel-elliotts-speed-old.435222/


As you can see, Todd Gurley & Ezekiel Elliott are very closely as fast as one another; Gurley having a slight advantage over the first 100-yards (Gurley's burst between the 20-to-60-yard mark is pretty special), with the advantage quickly turning to Zeke in stamina over longer runs. The point being...

Gurley's top-speed during his rookie year, as recorded by Next Gen Stats, was 21.74mph.

Going into his second season, another year of recovery on that ACL behind him, and a full off-season in an NFL strength & conditioning program, and there's no question that Gurley, the athlete, was a superior specimen to his rookie self.

What was "better-athlete-than-ever" Todd Gurley's top-speed in 2016, year-2? 20.72mph, over one full mile-per-hour slower than lesser-athlete Todd Gurley achieved the year before.

How can this be?


Well, year-2 is often the toughest season in a running back's career. Halfback is one of the best positions in the NFL to really hit the ground running, no pun intended, because your natural talents translate more equivalently between the college-&-pro games than a lot of other positions. Plus, no one has relevant tape on you...

But after a full rookie campaign, NFL defensive units --from the coaches on down-- kind of know who you are, what you like to do, and how your team uses you; situationally, down & distance, formation, you name it; and the going gets a lot tougher.

The great ones adjust, adapt, and use their natural tools to navigate the increasingly formidable NFL landscape, gain yards, and keep winning. Defensive schemes, the rotating talent around them, the changing terrain makes for an unstable testing-ground. That Todd Gurley didn't achieve as high a top-speed in 2016 didn't mean that he wasn't physically capable of achieving that velocity anymore, but rather the circumstances --one of which being unsuspecting defenses who had never encountered his unique talent before-- didn't facilitate Gurley having the same kind of opportunity again in season-2.

Human sprinters tend to reach their top-speed around the 60-meter mark of a 100m sprint.

During week-1, this year, Saquon Barkley achieved 21.76mph on his 59-yard run versus us.

Barkley's fastest speed last season was 21.91 miles-per-hour.

Is Saquon slower this year??

No. It's that the run he hit his high-speed on last season was a 78-yarder.

He simply had more runway to inch closer to his maximum mph, which as I explained in another post, in possibly another thread, I calculate is approximately 22mph. It would not be surprising if we never see Saquon record a higher speed than the 21.91mph we've already seen; and that, too, won't mean that he's gotten any slower.


Also, relying purely on the raw miles-per-hour someone achieves on a football field to determine how fast they are as an athlete, overall, is one-dimensionalizing the argument to the Nth degree.

Case in point, did you know that Jordan Howard, in his rookie season (2016, like Zeke), recorded a faster miles-per-hour than Next Gen Stats has ever recorded for Todd Gurley or Ezekiel Elliott?

Howard hit 22.03mph, a speed neither Gurley, Ezekiel Elliott, or Saquon Barkley have ever achieved on an NFL football field. Are we to presume, then, that Howard is faster than all three??

Indeed, of the 4 "generational" halfbacks who've been drafted in the top-10 four-years in a row, only Leonard Fournette's blistering 22.05mph, 90-yard sprint during his rookie campaign eclipses the raw, BLAZING speed of....... Jordan Howard???

Look, y'all, all these guys are world-class athletes. Every. Single. One of them.

Todd Gurley, who is about as fast as Ezekiel Elliott, was literally a Junior Olympic member of the USA team & routinely regarded as a "world-class-sprinter" throughout the draft process and regularly throughout his career. And guess what? Todd Gurley is not the fastest man in the NFL.

Man, some of these wide-receivers and cornerbacks can flat-out fly!


What makes a world-class-sprinter?

Technique. Stamina. The ability to turn it on to different bandwidths as needed.

There are men who might technically be able to achieve a higher miles-per-hour than Todd Gurley & Ezekiel Elliott, but because they know how to run, can run with stamina, use vision & feel to maximize the field, there are very few who are genuinely going to run them down from behind.

Why?

Because they are two of the fastest running backs in the NFL, regardless of whether Jordan Howard hit a higher-speed once upon a time. These guys are sprinters, by trade, who play football as a job. They know how to run. And they are fast.

Pay attention to what other players & coaches say about Ezekiel Elliott. It's hard to find another professional football person who doesn't comment on him being "very fast" or having "a lot of speed". It is undoubtedly a part of his game.

If you pay attention to, or have even watched breakdown videos by Sturm, Broaddus, or others which inform you, Dallas' running-scheme to a large degree relies on Ezekiel Elliott's quickness & speed --because it leaves an unblocked outer defender on most inside handoffs & counts on Zeke being able to accelerate by the crashing defender.

He keeps succeeding at it.

Because the man is very fast, and uncommonly so for the running back position, which often gets by on quickness, skill, & grit more than outright speed (*cough, Emmitt Smith, cough, cough*), and awareness of his speed forces defenses to play us differently; because they know if they're out-of-position, he can take it.


Zeke has been the primary focus of defensive game-plans since he's come into the league. Romo goes down in Elliott's rookie year & a 4th-round rookie replaces him. Man, the NFL has been daring Dak to beat them ever since; by loading up to stop the guy who keeps rushing for more yards than everybody else on the list. This year might be the first when Dak was up to the challenge. But no doubt, those lack of long runways --which got taken away by intensive film-study & game-planning, just like they did for Gurley-- is evidence that Ezekiel Elliott, who very recently hit his 24th birthday and is only just reaching his athletic-prime as a human being, is slower than he was as a lesser athlete, and less finely trained, than he is now.


40-times aren't the be-all answer, either.

Ryan Shazier put up a 4.37 at his pro-day, a full 10th of a second faster than Zeke's time from the Combine (and .03 faster than Saquon's). Here is Shazier beating Antonio Brown, Marcus Wheaton, and Sammie Coates in a foot-race:

https://www.espn.com/blog/pittsburg...pic-foot-race-flashes-breakout-star-potential


And here is Ryan Shazier being hopelessly out-classed in speed by Ezekiel Elliott:




When Sean McVay took over the Rams and built a high-flying offense designed to take pressure off Gurley, who faced amongst the very lowest 8+ man fronts in the league from 2017-18, his top-mph rebounded @ Next Gen Stats to 21.23mph (in 2017) --which is the fastest he's run ever since. That year, Todd Gurley won NFL Offensive Player of the Year honors.

What excites me most about 2019 is that Kellen Moore may well have designed an offense that backs those defenders out of the box, as McVay did for Gurley, and give Zeke the kind of lanes he hasn't really seen since 2016. I imagine no one dethrones Mahomes anytime soon for League MVP, but it would not shock me at all for Zeke to go on to earn Offensive Player of the Year as a result of Dak & Kellen Moore's simultaneous arrival.

Football, in the words of retired Andrew Luck, is the ultimate team sport.

Ironically, he might not be retired if he'd gotten some more help from the teammates in front of him; or maybe rather the front-office that didn't prioritize it. But, I digress...


Nonetheless, yes, Ezekiel Elliott is one of the fastest running backs in the league.

The very fastest Todd Gurley has ever been recorded was 21.74mph.

Zeke's fastest recorded speed in the NFL is 21.80 --faster than Gurley.

Of course, Jordan Howard is faster than them both!

I strongly, strongly believe, as the season evolves, you'll see outbursts from Zeke, along with all the other unheralded things he does, that have been harder to come by lately...

 

[Toruk_Makto]

It’s quite easy to do if you’re totally untouched. SMDH

That run would rank the 2nd fastest of Zeke's career. His fastest since week 16 of 2016.

It is now after 3 weeks the 2nd fastest of the NFL season. Zeke is not ranked.

Pretending some special circumstance unique to that particular run is why Barkley hit that speed is a joke. It isn't even the fastest of his career.

Speed is like porn. You know it when you see it.

Having to argue why Zeke doesn't have a run longer than 41 yards or hasn't hit speeds of other backs in the league in his last 600 carries says it all. He's not fast.

 

[Toruk_Makto]

What's interesting to me is that a lot people suggesting Zeke has lost his speed since 2016, despite becoming a superior athlete since then (this is not disputable with logic or facts), don't really seem to understand how football works, are offering decontextualized stats to support an incongruent argument, and ignoring the role circumstance plays in results.

Let's talk about Todd Gurley...


Here's an analysis I wrote a while back comparing Ezekiel & Gurley's speed:

https://cowboyszone.com/threads/on-...sight-into-ezekiel-elliotts-speed-old.435222/


As you can see, Todd Gurley & Ezekiel Elliott are very closely as fast as one another; Gurley having a slight advantage over the first 100-yards (Gurley's burst between the 20-to-60-yard mark is pretty special), with the advantage quickly turning to Zeke in stamina over longer runs. The point being...

Gurley's top-speed during his rookie year, as recorded by Next Gen Stats, was 21.74mph.

Going into his second season, another year of recovery on that ACL behind him, and a full off-season in an NFL strength & conditioning program, and there's no question that Gurley, the athlete, was a superior specimen to his rookie self.

What was "better-athlete-than-ever" Todd Gurley's top-speed in 2016, year-2? 20.72mph, over one full mile-per-hour slower than lesser-athlete Todd Gurley achieved the year before.

How can this be?


Well, year-2 is often the toughest season in a running back's career. Halfback is one of the best positions in the NFL to really hit the ground running, no pun intended, because your natural talents translate more equivalently between the college-&-pro games than a lot of other positions. Plus, no one has relevant tape on you...

But after a full rookie campaign, NFL defensive units --from the coaches on down-- kind of know who you are, what you like to do, and how your team uses you; situationally, down & distance, formation, you name it; and the going gets a lot tougher.

The great ones adjust, adapt, and use their natural tools to navigate the increasingly formidable NFL landscape, gain yards, and keep winning. Defensive schemes, the rotating talent around them, the changing terrain makes for an unstable testing-ground. That Todd Gurley didn't achieve as high a top-speed in 2016 didn't mean that he wasn't physically capable of achieving that velocity anymore, but rather the circumstances --one of which being unsuspecting defenses who had never encountered his unique talent before-- didn't facilitate Gurley having the same kind of opportunity again in season-2.

Human sprinters tend to reach their top-speed around the 60-meter mark of a 100m sprint.

During week-1, this year, Saquon Barkley achieved 21.76mph on his 59-yard run versus us.

Barkley's fastest speed last season was 21.91 miles-per-hour.

Is Saquon slower this year??

No. It's that the run he hit his high-speed on last season was a 78-yarder.

He simply had more runway to inch closer to his maximum mph, which as I explained in another post, in possibly another thread, I calculate is approximately 22mph. It would not be surprising if we never see Saquon record a higher speed than the 21.91mph we've already seen; and that, too, won't mean that he's gotten any slower.


Also, relying purely on the raw miles-per-hour someone achieves on a football field to determine how fast they are as an athlete, overall, is one-dimensionalizing the argument to the Nth degree.

Case in point, did you know that Jordan Howard, in his rookie season (2016, like Zeke), recorded a faster miles-per-hour than Next Gen Stats has ever recorded for Todd Gurley or Ezekiel Elliott?

Howard hit 22.03mph, a speed neither Gurley, Ezekiel Elliott, or Saquon Barkley have ever achieved on an NFL football field. Are we to presume, then, that Howard is faster than all three??

Indeed, of the 4 "generational" halfbacks who've been drafted in the top-10 four-years in a row, only Leonard Fournette's blistering 22.05mph, 90-yard sprint during his rookie campaign eclipses the raw, BLAZING speed of....... Jordan Howard???

Look, y'all, all these guys are world-class athletes. Every. Single. One of them.

Todd Gurley, who is about as fast as Ezekiel Elliott, was literally a Junior Olympic member of the USA team & routinely regarded as a "world-class-sprinter" throughout the draft process and regularly throughout his career. And guess what? Todd Gurley is not the fastest man in the NFL.

Man, some of these wide-receivers and cornerbacks can flat-out fly!


What makes a world-class-sprinter?

Technique. Stamina. The ability to turn it on to different bandwidths as needed.

There are men who might technically be able to achieve a higher miles-per-hour than Todd Gurley & Ezekiel Elliott, but because they know how to run, can run with stamina, use vision & feel to maximize the field, there are very few who are genuinely going to run them down from behind.

Why?

Because they are two of the fastest running backs in the NFL, regardless of whether Jordan Howard hit a higher-speed once upon a time. These guys are sprinters, by trade, who play football as a job. They know how to run. And they are fast.

Pay attention to what other players & coaches say about Ezekiel Elliott. It's hard to find another professional football person who doesn't comment on him being "very fast" or having "a lot of speed". It is undoubtedly a part of his game.

If you pay attention to, or have even watched breakdown videos by Sturm, Broaddus, or others which inform you, Dallas' running-scheme to a large degree relies on Ezekiel Elliott's quickness & speed --because it leaves an unblocked outer defender on most inside handoffs & counts on Zeke being able to accelerate by the crashing defender.

He keeps succeeding at it.

Because the man is very fast, and uncommonly so for the running back position, which often gets by on quickness, skill, & grit more than outright speed (*cough, Emmitt Smith, cough, cough*), and awareness of his speed forces defenses to play us differently; because they know if they're out-of-position, he can take it.


Zeke has been the primary focus of defensive game-plans since he's come into the league. Romo goes down in Elliott's rookie year & a 4th-round rookie replaces him. Man, the NFL has been daring Dak to beat them ever since; by loading up to stop the guy who keeps rushing for more yards than everybody else on the list. This year might be the first when Dak was up to the challenge. But no doubt, those lack of long runways --which got taken away by intensive film-study & game-planning, just like they did for Gurley-- is evidence that Ezekiel Elliott, who very recently hit his 24th birthday and is only just reaching his athletic-prime as a human being, is slower than he was as a lesser athlete, and less finely trained, than he is now.


40-times aren't the be-all answer, either.

Ryan Shazier put up a 4.37 at his pro-day, a full 10th of a second faster than Zeke's time from the Combine (and .03 faster than Saquon's). Here is Shazier beating Antonio Brown, Marcus Wheaton, and Sammie Coates in a foot-race:

https://www.espn.com/blog/pittsburg...pic-foot-race-flashes-breakout-star-potential


And here is Ryan Shazier being hopelessly out-classed in speed by Ezekiel Elliott:




When Sean McVay took over the Rams and built a high-flying offense designed to take pressure off Gurley, who faced amongst the very lowest 8+ man fronts in the league from 2017-18, his top-mph rebounded @ Next Gen Stats to 21.23mph (in 2017) --which is the fastest he's run ever since. That year, Todd Gurley won NFL Offensive Player of the Year honors.

What excites me most about 2019 is that Kellen Moore may well have designed an offense that backs those defenders out of the box, as McVay did for Gurley, and give Zeke the kind of lanes he hasn't really seen since 2016. I imagine no one dethrones Mahomes anytime soon for League MVP, but it would not shock me at all for Zeke to go on to earn Offensive Player of the Year as a result of Dak & Kellen Moore's simultaneous arrival.

Football, in the words of retired Andrew Luck, is the ultimate team sport.

Ironically, he might not be retired if he'd gotten some more help from the teammates in front of him; or maybe rather the front-office that didn't prioritize it. But, I digress...


Nonetheless, yes, Ezekiel Elliott is one of the fastest running backs in the league.

I strongly, strongly believe, as the season evolves, you'll see outbursts from Zeke, along with all the other unheralded things he does, that have been harder to come by lately...

What makes Zeke a superior athlete today than 3 years ago? Was it coming into camp out of shape his 2nd year? Was it the lack of explosiveness last year? Was it the fact his top speed has declined every single year since his rookie year?

 

[keysersoze]

That run would rank the 2nd fastest of Zeke's career. His fastest since week 16 of 2016.

It is now after 3 weeks the 2nd fastest of the NFL season. Zeke is not ranked.

Pretending some special circumstance unique to that particular run is why Barkley hit that speed is a joke. It isn't even the fastest of his career.

Speed is like porn. You know it when you see it.

Having to argue why Zeke doesn't have a run longer than 41 yards or hasn't hit speeds of other backs in the league in his last 600 carries says it all. He's not fast.

You must be yet another millennial fantasy football geek huh? Answer this Genius. On each of the runs you speak of was Barkley hit or touched before reaching top speed? What was the formations on offense and defense? Was the defense in a pass defending formation? Was the offense showing run or pass? What was the score? What was the down and distance? How much time was left in the game? Was there a blown gap assignment on the defense? See, all these components are factors in top speed reached on any given run. Zeke is plenty fast regardless to what you believe. But you must take into account that every team we faced sought to shut down Zeke and force Dak to pass. So Zeke earned his yardage the hard way by grinding down after down after down. That’s what he does best as proven by his 2 rushing titles in 3 seasons and he would’ve had 3 in a row if he wasn’t suspended for 6 games. Now that out passing game has taken flight you’ll see Zeke break those big runs or else the huge bombs to our WRs will continue to prevail.

 

[Melonfeud]

All that cash has to weigh a man down some.

Oh,,, no doubt brougham ,as his minds on his money& his money is& always has been, on his daddy's mind,,,