You want to know why the photo above doesn’t have a face?
It is because there aren’t any photos of Rondel Melendez online. My dog Ellie is more well-known than him. Who is Rondel Melendez you might ask? He has the fastest electronically timed 40-yard-dash at NFL Combine (the only mention Chris Johnson on TV for some reason).
He was drafted by the Falcons but never played a down in the NFL.
It helps to be fast in the NFL, but how many times have you ever seen a player get the ball and just run straight for 40 yards? To get to that point they normally have to make a series of moves to get into the open field. If you are defender you lateral movement and ability to recognize what is happening within seconds is often times more important than running really really fast.
So while you will hear a lot about 40 times boosting or hurting draft stock, just remember they are running in shorts (for the life of me I don’t know why they don’t time them in pads) and their football IQ and instincts are way more important than their 40 time.
As you can see from the chart, 40 times are similar to any other evaluation of players. You just don’t know how it will translate to the field, so it is best to make your decisions based on game tape, not track tape.