No, 46-Year-Old Terrell Owens Didn’t Run a 4.4-Second 40-Yard Dash
T.O. is fast, but he’s not *that* fast
Now I know why Terrell Owens has spent a decade talking about coming back to the NFL. He’s still fast as hell.
Owens, 46, recently worked out with Chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill in a session Hill posted on his YouTube channel. They decided to do a 100-yard race (with Owens getting a 10-yard head start) for $1,000 and Hill, probably the fastest receiver in the NFL, couldn’t catch Owens.
Since T.O. seems not to have lost a step, they decided to race in the 40-yard dash, this time with no handicap. Hill beat Owens by just a couple of strides. It was an impressive performance, made even more noteworthy by the time one of the trainers on hand claimed to have clocked Hill at. He said his stopwatch had Hill at 4.37 seconds, and that Owens must have been “about about 4.4, 4.42.”
Outlets like Bleacher Report hyped up the 4.4-second time. If you search Twitter for T.O.’s name and 4.4, you’ll find tons of people talking about how he needs to be back in the NFL. If he really had run a 4.4 40, of course he should get an NFL contract. But he obviously didn’t really run that fast.
I put Hill’s video into some editing software so that I could cut it frame-by-frame to time the race precisely. Hill ran his 40 in 4.6 seconds. Owens was 4.9.
That’s still insanely fast, especially for a 46-year-old! If Owens ran that time at the 2020 NFL combine, he’d be on par with a lot of tight ends and pass rushers. When he ran the 40 at the 1996 combine (before the introduction of electronic timing), he was clocked at 4.65 seconds, not far off from what he ran against Hill.
The race also shows just how fine the margins are between great speed and elite speed. Hill is one of the fastest players in the league. He can run faster than a 4.6 (he ran 4.29 at the NFL combine in 2016) but maybe not in the hot sun after having just run another race. Owens was only a couple of strides behind him, which is an unbelievable feat for a guy 20 years older than Hill, but in the NFL those couple of strides are the difference between a tackle and a touchdown.
The best of SI
No Olympic cheater was as bold as Boris Onischenko. ... Here’s another dispatch from Chris Mannix inside the NBA bubble. ... No MLB manager is better suited for the oddity of a 60-game season than the Brewers’ Craig Counsell.
Around the sports world
The University of Texas wants to limit its football stadium to 50% capacity (about 50,000 fans) for games this fall. ...The NFL is reportedly going to let players honor victims of police brutality with helmet decals. ... The owner of the Timberwolves is considering selling and Kevin Garnett is considering bidding. ... Forbes spoke with the four guys running the @NBABubbleLife account on Twitter. ... EA Sports won’t release NHL 21 for the new Xbox and Playstation consoles that come out this winter. ... A player was kicked out of the World Team Tennis tournament for leaving the league’s bubble.
NBA players are united behind this
The Hawks are finally ditching their ugly highlighter unis
The World Surf League’s Wipeout of the Year nominees
Not too shabby
I mean, he was only four years old when that song came out
No wonder the Yankees gave this kid $5.1 million
Come on, Jimmy
Just like Washington
Bears second-round pick Jaylon Johnson signed his contract in bed
Is this the future of replays?
Shouldn’t have deleted it
He could be the third Lopez brother
Not sports
A group is working to recreate the boat from Jaws to educate people about the ocean. ... A Japanese company has created a program that makes karaoke sound better when you’re wearing a mask.
This movie debuted 10 years ago this week
This guy made a video game suit of armor out of spacesuit parts
A good song
Email dan.gartland@si.com with any feedback or follow me on Twitter for approximately one half-decent baseball joke per week. Bookmark this page to see previous editions of Hot Clicks and find the newest edition every day. By popular request I’ve made a Spotify playlist of the music featured here. Visit our Extra Mustard page throughout each day for more offbeat sports stories.
