If Texas quarterback Arch Manning had run through a school zone on Saturday, he might have received a speeding ticket.
Reel Analytics, a sports technology company that uses video to extract athletic data, measured a speed of 20.7 miles per hour on Manning’s 67-yard touchdown run after he replaced an injured Quinn Ewers in the 56-7 victory over UTSA at Royal Memorial Stadium.
Soon after, a viral comparison graphic between Manning and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill went viral across social media. Hill, famous for his speed, topped out at 20.3 mph in the first two games of the NFL season.
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“To put the Tyreek Hill thing in context, Arch had a 67-yard run where he was virtually untouched,” Alfonzo Thurman, the COO of Reel Analytics, told the American-Statesman this week. “He was able to hit his true top speed. … We know Tyreek Hill hit 23.24 mph; that was his fastest mph. So no, Arch is not faster than Tyreek Hill.
“It’s a little misleading, but, hey, it’s good clickbait on social media.”
No matter how fast Manning ran, it was fast enough
This isn’t clickbait: Manning’s speed is real for a quarterback.
The 6-foot-4, 220-pound nephew of stone-legged NFL legends Peyton and Eli Manning ranks in the top quartile of all quarterbacks in speed in Reel Analytics’ database of more than 17,000 players of all skill levels, according to the company’s CEO, Cory Yates.
“When the adrenaline kicks in, it helps you run a little faster,” Manning said Saturday night. “I credit Torre Becton, our head coach (strength coach), for that.”
Making quarterback analysis a science
Both Thurman and Yates, who founded Reel Analytics in 2019, base their business acumen on their football backgrounds. Thurman played linebacker at Indiana, where he earned All-Big Ten recognition, and Yates played — and briefly coached — at Texas A&M-Commerce.
Thurman and Yates have worked with programs like Michigan, Georgia and TCU over the past five years. When they started their company, they surveyed more than 120 college coaches and player personnel staff and found that interest in data on quarterback athleticism was minimal. So they didn’t develop as many ways to collect quarterback metrics as they would for other positions where a player’s processing ability isn’t always as important.
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“When we interviewed coaches and scouts in 2019, they said, ‘Hey, don’t prioritize this; don’t worry about it,'” Yates recalled. “We want to meet them in person. We want to talk about the ball, to see what’s going on between the ears.'”
But the game continued to evolve and with this evolution, demand also changed.
According to Yates and Thurman, coaches and talent scouts are now very interested in the speed of a quarterback.
For example, coaches called in the offseason to check the speed of Dequan Finn, a quarterback who was clocked at 21.8 mph last season at Toledo before entering the transfer portal and committing to Baylor.
Manning’s speed is more important now than ever, and his hitting 20.7 mph is more than just a funny social media post.
This is a turning point.
“Talent evaluators really want to know: Can this player give us a competitive advantage, a matchup advantage, if he can make plays with his legs?” Yates said. “So max speed is valuable. If you asked those same coaches and talent evaluators five years ago, they would have said, ‘Yeah, we’re not that interested in that,’ because that’s what they told us. Now they say, ‘Hey, can you attest to speed?’, especially with transfer portal prospects.”
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