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In under five seconds, an NFL prospect’s draft stock can either be made or broken, often with a tenth of a second making a huge difference.
The 40-yard dash is the must-see event of the NFL Scouting Combine. A number of players have moved themselves from third-round prospects to first-round prospects by lighting up the stopwatches. While others have seen their stock plummet.
But where does the 40-yard dash come from? After all, an NFL field is 100 yards from goal line to goal line. Why not 50 yards? Or 25?
Outside of wide receivers and cornerbacks, it’s rare that players run 40 yards in a straight line during any given play anyway.
As it turns out, the game dates back to one of football’s most legendary coaches.
Paul Brown Is Responsible For The Creation Of The 40-Yard Dash
Personally, I’d never thought to stop and ask why the 40-yard dash is 40 yards long. It just seemed like a reasonable distance, and it’s always been that long for my entire life.
But thanks to former NFL employee Anand Nanduri, I (and you) now know the origins of the drill, and they make a ton of sense.
Do you know why we run the 40 yard dash? Not 10, not 100, but 40?
Before we had a draft, teams would just sign college all-Americans. The small school kids might be able to play, but how do we standardize how fast they are? Paul Brown estimated that on average, a punt travels…— Anand Nanduri (@NanduriNFL) March 2, 2026
Prior to the creation of the NFL Draft, teams were free to sign whoever they’d like. When the draft rolled around in the 1930s, teams needed a way of evaluating how small-school players stacked up next to players from predominant powers.
Legendary Cleveland Browns head coach (and the team’s namesake), determined that, on average, a punt traveled 40 yards downfield in around 4.5 seconds. He used the 40-yard dash to determine which players would provide the best gunners on punt coverage.
Gil Brandt, a two-time Super Bowl-winning scout for the Dallas Cowboys, who helped create the first ever combine in 1982, took the drill from Brown.
The 40-yard dash was one of the combine’s first tests, and it’s stuck ever since.
It’s hard to think Brown ever imagined a player could possibly run in the 4.3s, let alone the 4.2s, as we see almost every year now. But what was once meant to assess someone’s punt coverage is now the most important test of every young football player’s career.