40 times have been discussed at length on here fairly recently, so I won’t go through my whole spiel on it again, but they’re seriously exaggerated on a regular basis. First of all, this was probably a hand-time, like when Michael Vick went through spring drills going into his RS-sophomore year with a bunch of 4.22-4.28 times. Coaches are biased, and their bias combine with human error to lead to inaccurate times.

What’s absolutely stupid is that football people use this flawed measurement system in the first place. 40 times should be done electronically, with an electronic start, not a self-start. Self-starts negate the importance of registration, which is the time between when the person is supposed to start moving to when he actually starts moving. Registration is a key part of track and field, which is why Usain Bolt’s 40 split out of his world-record 100m dash could very well have been a “mere” 4.33, but he’d still blow the doors off a guy who timed 4.25 in a self-started 40 at the NFL combine (Chris Johnson, for example). Track is not football, but registration is as critical in football as it is in track, so there’s absolutely no good reason that it’s not part of timing the 40.