How to become an NFL player Part 3
In my first two articles on how to become an NFL player, I covered the work you need to do in the classroom, the community, and how to take care of your body to increase your chances of becoming an NFL player.
In this article, I’m going to discuss the specific football drill skills you need to develop to make yourself look attractive to college football scouts. For best results, I recommend that you work on these exercises with a strength coach or professional trainer.
Here are the exercises you need to master:
* Vertical Jump: Designed to test leg strength and lower body explosiveness.
* Wide jump: designed to show slowness, heavy legs and lack of explosiveness.
* 225 lbs. Bench Press – Designed to test a player’s upper body strength.
* 40-yard dash: Timings show how explosive a player is off the line and how they keep it up.
* 20 Yard Rush – Timings show how explosive a player is off the line and how they keep it up.
* 10-yard dash – Times show how explosive a player is off the line.
* 20-yard shuttle – designed to test explosiveness, how a player bends and changes direction, and body control.
* 60-yard shuttle – designed to test explosiveness, flexibility, and body control; and a subtle test of resistance.
* 3 Cone Drill – Designed to test a player’s efficiency in changing direction by moving left and right, explosiveness, balance, body control and mobility.
The most important skills to master are the 40-yard dash and the 3-cone drill. The reason these two drills are so important is that they help soccer coaches determine which positions are best suited to play.
You should know that the speed with which players complete these exercises has been improving every year. That’s because more and more high school and college players are working with professional sports coaches to help them maximize their performance.
Below I have listed the minimum times you must have per position if you want to impress college football scouts. One thing to keep in mind for these tests is the size of the player. Smaller players should have an advantage over their larger counterparts when it comes to speed. If you’re a great player, it says a lot about your athletic ability if you perform well on these drills.
40 yard dash:
QB: 4.7 seconds or faster
RB: 4.5 seconds or faster
WR: 4.4 seconds or faster
FB/TE: 4.7 seconds or faster
OL: 5.2 seconds or faster
DT: 5.1 seconds or faster
4-3 DE and 3-4 OLB: 4.8 seconds or faster
4-3 OLB: 4.7 seconds or faster
ILB: 4.7 seconds or faster
S: 4.5 seconds or faster
CB: 4.5 seconds or faster
3 cone drill:
QB: 7.1 seconds or faster
RB: 7.1 seconds or faster
WR: 7.0 seconds or faster
FB/TE: 7.2 seconds or faster
OL: 7.8 seconds or faster
DT: 7.7 seconds or faster
4-3 DE and 3-4 OLB: 7.2 seconds or faster
4-3 OLB: 7.1 seconds or faster
ILB: 7.2 seconds or faster
S: 7.1 seconds or faster
CB: 7.0 seconds or faster
In short, to become a professional football player, you must master the skills colleges and NFL teams use to measure the quality of an athlete. If you want to make it to the NFL, you need to work with a professional sports coach to help you maximize your performance so you can meet and exceed the punch speed times discussed above. Other athletes are doing this and for you to be able to compete with them, you must too.