Five months ago, South Carolina Shane Beamer was given the unenviable task of explaining why the Georgia defense had just steamrolled the Gamecocks’ offense. He gave a number of reasons, but singled out only one player, “a defensive lineman that weighs 340 pounds and runs better than everybody on this call.”
The player was Jordan Davis, and as it turns out, Beamer may have been underselling the mammoth nose tackle’s speed.
Davis threw down one of the wildest performances at the NFL scouting combine on Saturday when he clocked in at 4.82 seconds. That number would later be corrected to 4.78 seconds, cementing Davis’ reputation as arguably the preeminent physical freak of this year’s NFL draft class.
There are plenty of ways to describe that run, but Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a former defensive lineman himself at Miami, may have done it best: “Holy s*** fast.”
Just the sight of Davis hauling himself down the field is enough to realize the kind of athlete we’re dealing with, but the picture becomes even more astonishing with some perspective.
Jordan Davis’ 40-time was historically good
If you were to group Davis with year’s offensive lineman, he would be a) the second-heaviest prospect of the group, behind only Minnesota’s 384-pound Daniel Faalele, and b) the fastest prospect of the group. Heck, if you were to group him with the tight ends, the players whose job description actually includes outrunning other players, he would have been the eighth fastest out of 13 players to run the 40. He also would have been the sixth fastest quarterback.
By the math of Pro Football Focus’ Kevin Cole, Davis’ time was the best weight-adjusted time in the history of the combine.
Just look at this:
The combine performance backs up a college career that will go down in Georgia history as an all-timer. In Davis’ senior year, he was a unanimous…
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