© Mark J. Rebilas | 2019 Nov 23
The 49ers decision to trade up and draft wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk with the 25th overall pick in this year’s draft was met with some skepticism. Not only did San Francisco elect not to take one of the consensus top three receivers early in the first round, but Aiyuk was seen by many as far from the type of speedster that Kyle Shanahan supposedly values.
That’s because Aiyuk ran a 4.5 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine. Compare that to Henry Ruggs — who clocked a ridiculous 4.27 — and it sure looks like Shanahan got the short end of the stick.
Here’s a shocker for you though: The Combine number doesn’t tell the whole story.
Aiyuk was dealing with a core-muscle injury that he sustained at the end of ASU’s season when he ran at the Combine. The 49ers actually thought the 4.5 time was “excellent” considering the injury according to The Athletic. What’s more, Aiyuk was clocked by a GPS device in his shoulder pad reaching a top speed of 21.97 mph with the Sun Devils last season. That would’ve made him the fourth fastest player in the NFL last year.
To put that in perspective, only three NFL players had higher speeds last season, according to Next Gen Stats, including 49ers running back Matt Breida. His 22.3 mph speed, which he hit on an 83-yard touchdown run against Cleveland in Week 5, was the fastest time of the year.
The situation was similar to last year when linebacker Dre Greenlaw ran an unremarkable 4.73-second 40-yard dash in the run-up to the draft. The 49ers had sent a number of scouts and evaluators to the University of Arkansas the season prior and all of them remarked about how fast Greenlaw was. They knew he was dealing with a hamstring strain when he ran his 40-yard dash and they also had obtained his GPS speed from Arkansas, 21.09 mph, which was the fastest among all the Razorbacks in 2018.
So it would appear that Shanahan did get his speedster after all. Another example of why you should take Combine numbers with a very large grain of salt.