Tyrone Watley wrote:
49 yards is just too short a distance to seperate track speed from football speed. Without a need for speed endurance, yes footballers can hang in a 40.
True.
Several could hang at 100 meters prior to bulking up starting in high school/college for football. When I say they're the same group of athletes, I mean that at 13, 14, 15 years old, this group of track/football speed athletes is all basically one big pile that then gets sorted out by relatively small differences in talent and interest in the different sports.
Look at how many NFLers were high school state champion sprinters: Reggie Bush, Javid Best, Adrian Peterson, Eric Dickerson, Jordy Nelson, Stephen Davis, Devin Hester (jumps), Adoree Jackson (jumps), and on and on and on.
By contrast, if you had started training Bolt, Gatlin, Powell, Gay, Blake, Ryan Bailey, etc. for football at a young enough age, a good percentage of these sprinters would be in the NFL today.