The Curious Case of Carnell Tate’s Combine Time … Would make an interesting title for a Poe short story! For those that missed the details, after Ohio State WR Carnell Tate was clocked in a somewhat disappointing 40 time of 4.53 seconds at the scouting combine in Indianapolis last weekend, Adam Schefter of ESPN, reported that several NFL teams had actually timed Tate running in the 4.45-4.47 range. Which is entirely possible as most, if not all teams do their own hand times of the players in addition to the official electronic timing done by the combine. And because hand timing is somewhat reliable as it relies on human reactions, it is possible to get that kid of variation. So it is possible that there were teams that did get Tate in that sub-4.5 range. But so what? Tate, in fact, ran not one, but two 40s and was timed in 4.54 in both (as with the majority of players in Indianapolis last week their official time was .01 less than their initial number) and its just highly unlikely that the electronic timing was wrong twice.
What is somewhat curious about Tate’s combine time, though, was his 10-yard split time. During his first run, Tate’s split was listed at 1.52 seconds which would have been among the best among the WRs and would have mitigated to a degree the poor overall time. And that 1.52 also showed up when the initial unofficial results were released for the WR 40s. However, when the official numbers were posted, Tate’s split time jumped to 1.61 which was one of the slowest get-off times of any of the receivers who did run on Saturday. In fact, we didn’t see any other split number for anyone running at the combine in any position grouping jump anywhere near that much, although to be clear that 1.61 figure is much more in keeping with someone who runs in the 4.53 range.
