The Converse: Fast Wide Receivers Drafted in Rounds 1-3 & Their Fantasy Prospects

The saga continues on WR speed. Yesterday I looked at wide receivers who ran slower than 4.56 40 in the NFL Combine Results database who were drafted in between rounds 1 and 3. Today, we will look at wide receivers with a 40 time faster or equal to 4.55 seconds (the sweet spot of 40 times for WR performance) drafted in between rounds 1 and 3.

As you can imagine, as WR speed increases, the likelihood of being drafted in rounds 1 through 3 increases. The first table had just 28 players; the table of players this time includes 115 individuals.

The raw data tells us initially that 37% of these receivers running faster than a 4.55 post at least 1 top-30 season, and that 24% of these players record multiple top-30 seasons, compared to 32% and 21% for players running slower than a 4.55. 27, or 62%, of the 43 players with top-30 seasons were 6 feet or taller. Compared to the slower wide receiver graph, where every single player that posted a top 30 season was over 6’1″. That immediately gives us a correlation to height for wide receiver performance. The slower a pass catcher is, the taller they need to be to increase their odds at a top 30 season.

Removing all of the rookies and 2nd year players (T.Y. Hilton, Rueben Randle, Brian Quick, Kendall Wright, Justin Blackmon, Alshon Jeffery, Michael Floyd, DeVier Posey, A.J. Jenkins, Stephen Hill, Justin Hunter, Cordarrelle Patterson, Tavon Austin from the fast table; Mohamed Sanu, Ryan Broyles, DeAndre Hopkins from the slow table), the percentages change a bit. 36% of the slower players posted a top-30, and now 41% of the faster players have done so, with 27% of them doing it twice. That is statistically significant territory, especially when factoring in the height requirements for the slower players.

Now, there is the matter of height for the quicker players. This table represents height in relation to top 30 seasons for faster players:

24 of the 126 top-30 seasons represented in the original table are found in the top 19 tallest players! Height clearly matters. Just as there is a sweet spot for 40 times (4.55), there seems to be a sweet spot for height as well. We’re increasing our sample size from the slow WR table, so it’s not entirely surprising that receivers as short 5’9 are producing top 30 seasons, but 73 inches, or 6’1″, remains the sweet spot for WR height, although more occurrences of top 30 seasons were produced by those shorter than 6’1″.

This introduces a converse relationship that I have suspected since the beginning of this research but now have real proof for. With the exception of Peerless Price, all of the 6′ or shorter WR’s had a 40 time faster than 4.47 and 13 of them had a 40 time faster than 4.42. This provides some evidence to the idea that not only is there a baseline of 4.55 speed, but that even with the ‘fast’ wide outs, there are separate tiers where height becomes less of an issue, as a player gets faster.

Weight is still a constant for the faster players. 37 of the 43 top-30 players weighed over 191 pounds, and 29 of them weighed out at 197 or heavier. Even as speed increases, and regardless of height, it helps to have prototypical NFL weight to avoid being muscled in the redzone and off of deep routes.

It’s hard to quantify the effects of Vertical Leap and Broad Jump (better statisticians than I have already found that short shuttle and 3-Cone times are hard to correlate to WR performance) because so many of the players, top-30 season having or not, don’t have recorded times. It’s worth noting that of the players shorter than the ‘sweet spot’ for height, all but Randall Cobb, Laverneus Coles, Lee Evans and Golden Tate had a higher than positional-average (according to Mock Draftable) vertical leap and only 11 of the 44 4.55 or faster players had a below average broad jump.

What Did We Learn About Fast Players?

Well, you don’t have to be as tall if you run a 4.55 or faster. It helps, but it isn’t a requirement. In between 1999 and 2011, 41% of wide receivers who ran a 4.55 40 or faster posted a top-30. That’s significant in and of itself. However, it is my thinking that if were to apply Jon Moore’s “Eric Decker Theory” (That a prospect who catches 35% of his teams yards, 35% of his teams touchdowns and turns 30% of his red zone targets into touchdowns is a legit NFL wide out) to the guys who posted solid 40 times and were drafted in rounds 1-3 but flopped as NFL players, we would find that NFL scouting departments weren’t doing a fantastic job. That will be my next post in this series.