10 Yard Split: What It Measures and What Is Fast

What the split tells a scout

Brandt, formerly of the Dallas Cowboys, wrote in that 2011 NFL.com piece that the 40 might matter even more for some positions when you look at the 10 and 20 yard splits. For receivers, he said, the 10 yard time gets extra attention because it measures burst off the line of scrimmage, and the wideout with the better 10 yard dash, not the better 40, often draws more interest.

440 puts the split first for the trenches. The offensive line plan lists the first two steps, the 10 yard split, as the first item in its speed focus. Brandt noted in the same piece that linemen rarely need to run 40 yards.

Is the split a different skill from the 40?

Mostly not, at least among NFL draft picks. A study of 1,136 draftees who tested at the combine from 2005 to 2009 found that the 10, 20 and 40 yard times were nearly perfectly correlated. A player with a fast split usually had a fast 40.

The same author suggested a test with a moving start if you want to measure top speed on its own. That is what a flying 10 sprint does. So a full picture of your speed uses both: the split for the start and a flying 10 for top speed. For how the full test is run and timed, see the 40 yard dash guide.

High school and college numbers

In a published study of 7,214 high school players at recruiting combines in 2015 and 2016, the 10 yard time averaged 1.9 seconds, with a standard deviation of 0.2, timed with laser gates. A companion report from the same research group, on combines over the same dates, describes the 10 as a split time within the 40. Nearly 7,000 players had a 10 yard time recorded. They were mostly freshmen through juniors at every position, so a lineman and a corner are in the same average. The same players averaged 3.1 seconds to 20 yards.

For a college comparison, 64 Division I players in a University of Missouri study, timed electronically on indoor turf, averaged 1.85 and 1.84 seconds in two test weeks. No public NFL Combine split table with a standard deviation turned up, so this page and the calculator rank your split against high school players only.

Did your split really improve?

In a study of 64 Division I players, the authors reported a smallest worthwhile difference of 3.8% for the electronically timed 10-yard sprint—about 0.07 seconds on a 1.90-second result. That figure comes from one college group; it is not a universal minimum for improvement or proof that an individual change is real. Retest under consistent conditions and consider several results.

Over 10 yards, one tenth of a second is about 5% of a 1.90 split, so the timing method has to match. Compare laser to laser and stopwatch to stopwatch, and read hand timed vs laser 40 before you mix the two.

Training a quicker 10

440 trains the split on acceleration days: 5 starts of 10 yards at full effort with a full minute of rest, from the stance you play in. Backs, receivers, quarterbacks, linebackers and specialists use the 10 yard sprint start; tight ends and linemen use the 3 point stance start; defensive backs start from a backpedal. Find your plan in the position guides, and the faster 40 guide covers the rest of the run.

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