Someone with a broken radar gun is spreading rumors that Daniel Jones is nearly as fast as Tyreek Hill.
Everyone loves a good joke, and apparently a fall Friday afternoon is a good time for the latest one to circulate around NFL Twitter. This particular joke features a quarterback for the New York Giants (a franchise that is also a joke), the NFL’s fastest player, and a radar gun that apparently stopped working long ago.
On Thursday night, the Giants faced the Philadelphia Eagles in a matchup of NFC East teams trying their best to play the least entertaining version of football possible. Daniel Jones, the Giants starting quarterback, decided to take off with the ball from his own 12-yard line with surprising results.
https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1319464628468867073
At first, the video made the rounds for two primary reasons. First, seeing someone like Jones run so far was so outrageous—as literally one of the longest runs by a quarterback since Y2K was a thing—that everyone wanted to share it. Second, and most important, somehow Jones couldn’t seal the deal and ends up tripping over nothing. It’s a display that aptly fit the miserable matchup exhibited in primetime.
But then came the following, via The Checkdown, with word that Jones, on that very run, reached the following speed:
https://twitter.com/thecheckdown/status/1319708682511388673
Yes, they are saying that, according to some unknown radar gun used by NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Jones reached a top speed that’s just milliseconds from eclipsing the likes of Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill.
Yeah, right.
Check this out. Here’s Daniel Jones at the NFL Combine running the 40-yard dash—the measuring stick for most “how fast is that guy” conversations.
Yep. that’s a 4.82 second time in the 40-yard dash. The second run? He comes in a bit slower at 4.84 seconds. For comparison Quinnen Williams, a 303 pound lineman, ran the 40-yard dash in 4.83 seconds.
Somehow that Jones has gotten so much faster after a single season in the NFL that he’s gone from “Duke QB fast” to “Cheetah”. Tyreek Hill, the four-time Pro Bowler who has been clocked among the NFL’s fastest on-field times since his arrival in the league, now has some very real competition among the league’s quarterbacks. Who knew?
It’s an amazing transformation for a player who clearly deserves a much bigger platform if he’s capable of hitting such top speeds on the playing field.
Or maybe someone just needs a new radar gun.