It's the delusions they feed these kids outside North America (chiefly in Europe and South America). They really do get sent as lambs to the slaughter against North American sports fans. The level of ignorance required to believe that Premier/Liga players are faster than NFL players is worthy of a Floridian charter school. Not that Corona needs the retroactive 2-year assist, but...
Top 100 meter times by NFL players
See #5, there,
@Rum?
That's this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hayes
And that time was the World Record he set while winning the gold medal he is wearing above in 1964 before hopping over to join the Cowboys on the way to a Hall of Fame career as a WR. He
still holds the record for the fastest 4x100m anchor leg in history.
See #3? Jeff Demps? The 10.01? Look to the right. That time was ran in
high school. Unlike Bob, who some will try to call a "Sprinter", as if parsing that matters, he went straight into football out of this high school career. I can only imagine how many D1 track coaches cried themselves to sleep over that. For reference, Usain Bolt ran a 9.93 at that age-- as a professional track star.
If you want to talk raw speed mph, I threw out a quick Google:
Carl Lewis ran a 9.92 in 1988. As you can see, his fastest 10m split was 0.83. This means during this 10m stretch he maintained an
average spe
ed of 26.95mph. That's how fast the fastest guys in NFL history have been able to run:
26mph-27mph (~12.0 m/s).
Acceleration? Quickness? The midgets can't even win this. Ronaldo's 3.61 in the 25m Corona quoted above can be compared more directly to the 3/4 court sprint at the NBA Combine: 75 ft = 22.86m.
The top time listed with the modern testing methodology and equipment is 2.91 by Cookie Belcher from 2001. That would be a 3.18 if you just projected out the time linearly, but of course, as you can see in the chart below (or above), by the time you've reached 20m, your average speed for the next 10m has doubled, and the elite sprinters are only ~15% off their top speed at this point averaging 10.7 m/s at this mark:
If I dock this NBA player 1 m/s to be safe, projecting a fly speed of 9.7 m/s I extrapolate a 25m time (requiring almost no adjustment) of
3.13s. That's nearly half a second superior to Ronaldo. Extend that time frame out to 100m. That's equivalent to beating a guy by over a full second.
But I think my favorite is the 2.99s court sprint from Joe Alexander who was 6'8", 220 lbs, bench pressed 185 for x24 reps, had a 38.5" max vertical leap, and washed out of the league in under 2 years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Alexander
That dude is quicker, faster, stronger, taller/longer, and bigger than Christiano Ronaldo.
Yeah, don't get me started on vertical leaps. Years ago
@Thames tried arguing that with me, and I dug up an S&C study of a bunch of Dutch players from the Premier League. The average standing vertical leap was 24.5". For NBA draft prospects the median range is 31"-34" in this test.