When evaluating football players, especially NFL ones, don’t be like Al Davis and Raiders of old. The 40-yard dash isn’t the be-all, end-all predictor of future success. This is an important thing to remember when judging the Pittsburgh Steelers’ third-round selection of RB Kaleb Johnson.
He ran a 4.57-second 40-yard dash at the 2025 NFL Scouting Combine. While that isn’t home-run hitter speed, Johnson runs well on tape and created a sufficient number of explosive plays at Iowa. The tape doesn’t lie.
“We didn’t question his speed whatsoever watching the video,” Mike Tomlin said Saturday via the Steelers’ YouTube channel. “Oftentimes that’s the case. You can watch video and be really excited about someone’s speed or you can go to the Combine and get excited by their Combine 40 time. His speed was not in question on video. He broke a lot of long runs in the Big Ten.”
One of the first things Arthur Smith said after the Steelers drafted Johnson was how explosive he is as a runner. He had at least one play of 35 yards or longer in eight games last season for Iowa.
If speed was the only thing that factored into explosive plays, then Dri Archer, Chris Rainey and Anthony McFarland Jr. would have been highly successful backs in Pittsburgh. None of them worked out.
Speed matters, but only when paired with patience, vision, lateral agility, contact balance, and anticipation. If the 40-yard dash argument had credence, then Derrick Henry (4,54-second 40-yard dash) wouldn’t be the future Hall of Famer that he is. Need I remind you that Le’Veon Bell’s 40-yard dash was 4.60.
If you put on the tape, as Tomlin suggested, you see a player who creates big plays with a combination of all those traits I listed above. Enjoy this cutup put together by HawkeyeHQ’s Blake Hornstein on X.
