Is there any NFL player that could currently run a 4:30 mile?

Worth mentioning I feel is that they would definitley need a pacer because nobody can just show up at a track warmup and run the correct pace. (That's never ran paced intervals before.)

This sounds legit.

By the way i really think AI ran a 4:4x, one of the team physicians insisted it was true despite my incredulity.

What would be awesome is if LR community raised a bunch of money and proposed a deal where the first NFL player (starting a week after the SB and ending 2 weeks after) to run a sub 4:30 would get it. If no one does it, the money goes to charity.

Watch the hilarity ensue.

5-minute mile is more realist. Fastest nfl runner could get around

4:50-5:10 mile.

So what's the conclusion?

Seriously, there is no way an NFL player can run a sub 4:30 mile, even if that isn't a great time.

Take the top 60m-100m-200m guys on a D1 track team. Is there one that can go sub 4:30? Now add about 20lbs of muscle. That's your typical NFL DB/WR. These guys do next to no aerobic training, there is no way they can run a sub 4:30. Another thing, your 400 has barely anything to do with your mile time, there are distance guys can't even break 59 but will run 4:30 and guys who run sub 50 and can't break 5.

msb__ wrote:

Seriously, there is no way an NFL player can run a sub 4:30 mile, even if that isn't a great time.

Take the top 60m-100m-200m guys on a D1 track team. Is there one that can go sub 4:30? Now add about 20lbs of muscle. That's your typical NFL DB/WR. These guys do next to no aerobic training, there is no way they can run a sub 4:30. Another thing, your 400 has barely anything to do with your mile time, there are distance guys can't even break 59 but will run 4:30 and guys who run sub 50 and can't break 5.

I bet you with a little training some of the top receivers, corner backs and safteys could do it. Andrew Wheating was 6'5 and 180 ibs, a bit of training a lot of the positions I mentioned could drop down to that weight. To think some of the best genetic specimens on the plant can't go sub 4:30 in the mile is crazy. Look at RG3 for example, had huge potential for the 400m hurdles. Now imagine how many Olympic potential 800m/1500m runners there are in the NFL. Who choose football over track, because it was more popular than track.

msb__ wrote:

Seriously, there is no way an NFL player can run a sub 4:30 mile, even if that isn't a great time.

Take the top 60m-100m-200m guys on a D1 track team. Is there one that can go sub 4:30? Now add about 20lbs of muscle. That's your typical NFL DB/WR. These guys do next to no aerobic training, there is no way they can run a sub 4:30. Another thing, your 400 has barely anything to do with your mile time, there are distance guys can't even break 59 but will run 4:30 and guys who run sub 50 and can't break 5.

Ashton Eaton at 6'1, 185 is a similar size and build to many receivers and dbs. His best 1500 time is 4:14.48, around a 4:35 mile. But this was at the end of a decathlon competition. It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch for him to run 6-7 seconds faster in a paced mile when he was fresh and in peak condition.

There some NFL guys like Jerry Rice and Roger Craig who incorporated a lot of cardio into their training. I assume there some guys today that do as well. I think probably at least a few that could do it or come very close.

The Eagles used to run a timed 800 at the start of training camp. The fastest guy was Terry Hoage who reportedly ran 2:02, it's possible he could have gone 4:30. He was probably a pretty big outlier, but I'd guess there is an outlier or two in the league that could do it.

No, no, no, and no.

A high school football kid came up to me and told me he had ran a 4:45 mile during the summer time.

I was the distance and xc coach at the school at the time.

When I was in high school a friend of mine said he ran 3 miles in 12 minutes almost every day.

We also had a kid from Japan turn out for the xc team and he said he could run 12 minutes for 3 miles.

His best time was about 22 minutes for 3 miles.

I ran with a kid from Nigeria when I was in college who said he could run an 800 in "about 2 minutes."

He could not even stay with me for a mile of a 2.5 mile run and I was not trying to drop him!

You really have to take what people say with a grain of salt. I mean you can say anything.

I think there was an NBA team that always ran a timed mile at the beginning of the season.

Very few of them could even break 6 minutes as I recall.

Are there NFL players good enough to run a 4:30 mile? Yes, if they trained for it.

They would also need to lose a lot of their weight & bulk. The smallest position in the NFL are defensive backs and even these guys dwarf mid-d runners. Most are over 6 ft & weighing well over 200 lbs. The shorter guys (5-9/5-10) come in at around 185-195 lbs - that's a pretty stocky build to be running a 4:30 mile.

A young Ted Ginn Jr. may have been able to race sub-4:30 mile. Ginn, a 47.57 400m man.

msb__ wrote:

Seriously, there is no way an NFL player can run a sub 4:30 mile, even if that isn't a great time.

Take the top 60m-100m-200m guys on a D1 track team. Is there one that can go sub 4:30? Now add about 20lbs of muscle. That's your typical NFL DB/WR. These guys do next to no aerobic training, there is no way they can run a sub 4:30. Another thing, your 400 has barely anything to do with your mile time, there are distance guys can't even break 59 but will run 4:30 and guys who run sub 50 and can't break 5.

Let's put down our bias towards track now and be realistic about the caliber of athlete we're talking about (4 years later) with NFL WR and DB's. Could they run a 4:30 mile?

To play that position in the NFL takes next level conditioning of all systems. I've read on average during a game, a WR or DB can run up to 6 miles, give or take depending on their opponent and the offense their in. Somebody like Antonio Brown may not be quite 4:30 mile speed, but I bet on any day he could run sub 5. I agree with previous posts about Ted Ginn, he was a world class RUNNER. I know a guy who played with him in college and he said he's never seen anything quite like Ted Ginn in terms of running, it was hard for him to even make sense of how freaskishly fast he was. Ted Ginn could have been an olympian on the track if he choose to.

Yes, Definitely:

1) Elite training-

NFL players have to wait in really long lines at the all you eat buffet sometimes.

This means they are sometimes on their feet for upwards 45 minutes at a time.

Football practices also require standing. Games might even require up to 300 M of running (for a few players).

2) Effective publicity-

NFL players have great publicist and non critical followers. This means that the average mile that NFL runners run would be around 900m.

Super star players should have great publicists. The super star mile might thus be as short as 600m.

3) Elite athletes-

Eating and sleeping are the most important parts of NFL training.

NFL players might only do 3,000 hours of practice field and gym practice in a lifetime. But they do 100,000+ hours of sleeping and eating.

This far exceeds the efforts of lazy sports like swimming, running, tennis.

(Where Elite athletes often do less than 15,000 hours of training).

When I was in college at a Division 1 school there was a 400 meter runner on our team that ran a 4:25 in a mile time trial we had during the fall that transferred to a smaller school to play football in the spring. I imagine a lot of undersized guys in the league (Christian McCaffrey, Philip Lindsey, Desean Jackson, Steve Smith, Jeremy Bloom, Trindon Holiday, etc.). Jeremy Bloom ran a 2:00 800 meter dash at the CBS Superstars competition in 2003. I bet a lot of the smaller, faster DBs, slot receivers and running backs could do it during the off season if they desired to.

Yea that is very likely, but the topic was if there was any NFL player could run a 4:30 without any specific training.

WTF, are you kidding?

Watch a game, the offense plays about 6:00-7:00 minutes total playing time in a game. That is from snap of ball until whistle, standing in a huddle is not playing time. This means that the defense plays 6:00-7:00 per game. Who the hell can run up to 6 miles in that short of a time? That is so ridiculous.

ok, let's talk wrote:

Let's put down our bias towards track now and be realistic about the caliber of athlete we're talking about (4 years later) with NFL WR and DB's. Could they run a 4:30 mile?

To play that position in the NFL takes next level conditioning of all systems. I've read on average during a game, a WR or DB can run up to 6 miles, give or take depending on their opponent and the offense their in.

It takes no more than a little though to realize this claim is bogus. In a football game each team has significantly less than 100 offensive plays and WRs and DBs run much less than 100 yards on each play. 100 x 100 yards is less than 6 miles and players get nowhere near this total yardage.