One of the greatest draft mysteries this year was just how fast did cornerback Damon Arnette run at the NFL Combine. According to the NFL’s official electric timing, Arnette ran a 4.56 40-yard dash, which puts him in the 24th percentile among cornerbacks since 1999.
However, general manager Mike Mayock strongly disputes that time as he has said that his scouts timed Arnette in the 4.43 range. How could there be this big of a dispute between the NFL’s time and what scouts recorded on their stopwatches?
There does appear to be some evidence that Arnette got a “quick trigger” from the electronic time as it looks like 0.12 seconds ticked off the clock before he even moved. And if you subtract 0.12 seconds from his time of 4.56, Mayock’s 4.43 suddenly makes a ton of sense.
But it wasn’t just the Raiders who disagreed with the NFL’s time for Arnette. According to Dane Brugler of The Athletic, another AFC team timed Arnette at 4.47 and 4.50. While those times aren’t quite as good as what Mayock mentioned, it’s a pretty significant difference as a 4.47 40-yard dash is in the 58 percentile among cornerbacks.
Why do these hundredths of a second matter for Arnette? If he did run in the 4.4s, it suddenly makes the pick at No. 19 a lot more reasonable. Taking cornerbacks inside the top-20 who run in the high 4.5s isn’t a worthwhile gamble considering how big of an outlier it is relative to their peers. But a 4.47 40-yard dash is much closer to what you want to see from a top-flight cornerback prospect.
We will never know what Arnette’s actual time is in the 40-yard dash, but it will be fascinating to see if his long speed is an issue or not in the NFL. But given just how productive he was at Ohio State, don’t expect it to be a problem for the new Raiders’ defensive back.
