Kene Nwangwu is football fast
Vikings rookie is showing he's more than just a speedy 40 time
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — Here’s a little trivia for your family get-together this holiday season: How many players since 2010 have more kirk returns for touchdown than Kene Nwangwu?
Only six, including former Vikings Cordarrelle Patterson and Percy Harvin.
Nwangwu has two touchdowns in his first eight kick returns. Nobody since 2010 got multiple scores that quickly and all the returners who brought back three or more returns for TD had at least 75 attempts.
Neither touchdown was fluky. The Vikings’ special teamers blocked ‘em up and Nwangwu put on the rocket blasters to the end zone. He was so far ahead of everyone else during his touchdown return last week that he was looking backward to see if fellow speedster Dan Chisena was catching up.
Nwangwu’s speed is why he’s here. In college, he only ran the football 144 times for 744 yards and caught seven passes, yet the Vikings spent a fourth-round pick on him.
“He’s an explosive athlete,” special teams coordinator Ryan Ficken said. “He can get to his top-end speed really quickly. He’s quick. He can make that one violent cut … and can get vertical right away without even breaking his stride. But it’s just his awareness and understanding where the bodies are on the field, just those natural instincts. You saw that in college, that’s why we wanted to go ahead and grab him.”
His 4.3 40-yard dash time put the former Iowa State Cyclone running back in the 98th percentile of all players who have come out in the draft. He was only 0.08 behind the fastest running back in NFL history, former Tennessee Titan Chris Johnson.
Nwangwu said that he knew from a very young age that he was a roadrunner in a world of wile coyotes.
“We were at a family picnic and I was running with 12 year olds and I was like six and I was beating them,” he said. “And then my auntie was telling my mom, your son, you might need to put him in sports and all that. I just try to go out there and use my God-given abilities the best I can.”
But running a blazing 40 time doesn’t always translate to the field the way it instantly has for Nwangwu. The speediest man ever at the Combine, receiver John Ross, has 61 career catches since coming into the NFL in 2017. If you’re a Madden player who likes to sign the 99 speed guys off the free agent wire, you might have heard of Dri Archer, JJ Nelson or Jalen Myrick.
Of course, there are also plenty of legends who were fast as all get out. Football lore would tell you that Bo Jackson ran a 4.12. Deion Sanders was hand-timed at 4.27. There have been reports that Randy Moss scooted a 4.25 as a freshman.
So what’s the difference? Why are some players crazy fast but only remembered for their 40 times while others use their quickness to thrive at the highest level?
“I think the term we use is 'Football Speed,’” quarterback Kirk Cousins said.
“Natural football speed in terms of being able to transition in and out of cuts and in and out of routes, drop their weight, change direction, it's a different kind of movement skill and certainly a running back has to do much of that,” Cousins continued. “You'll always take the ability to do that and be 4.3 over the ability to do that and be 4.6 but you'd like to think Kene has both tools and that's a large reason he's been so effective and why we're excited to have him.”
The Vikings’ quarterback used the NFL’s greatest returner Devin Hester, who ran a solid 4.41, as an example.
“Devin Hester, he was a great kick returner, it wasn't like he was 4.2 but he had an ability to never lose speed as he cut,” Cousins said. “When you can keep your speed up as you're cutting, it's that much harder to bring you down.”
Mike Zimmer judges speed by how fast a player looks in comparison to the competition.
“I think the biggest thing there is that you see them against the other guys, you see the acceleration, the guy running away from the fast guys,” Zimmer said. “Some guys put the pads on, and they run a 4.5, not 4.3. If you see them running away from fast players, typically you know they are pretty fast. You know, like J.J., you see him running away from fast guys.”
The NFL now has an accurate way to figure out which players are fastest with pads on and the ball in their hands, rather than short-shorts and tank tops. NFLNextGEN stats track each player’s speed down to the decimal. Last week, Nwangwu’s top speed was 20.19 mph, which was the 12th highest of any player carrying the ball last week. Coincidentally, the fastest top speed with the ball came against the Vikings on Marquez Valdez-Scantling’s 75-yard touchdown when he reached 22.09 mph.
Zimmer named-dropped Deion as the fastest “football fast” player he’s ever coached.
Nwangwu was a tremendous track athlete in high school, owning school records in the high jump (6-10), long jump (24-2.75), 100 meters (10.71) and 200 meters (22.0). He said that track helped him solidify his running form to get everything out of his God-given ability.
“For me, it’s just incorporating that into football working with patience and vision,” Nwangwu said.
Having the combination of track speed and football speed is something former Viking Robert Smith knows all about. On the Purple Insider podcast, the two-time Pro Bowl running back talked about the impact on an offense of having a player with both.
“That extra bit of speed is deadly,” Smith said. “Because no matter how much you prepare for it, even if you think you’re taking the right angle or if you think you’re going to get to where you need to be on time, you only need to be one-hundredth of a second off and it’s the difference between that play got filled properly from a run-fit perspective to, it’s a touchdown. That’s what the game is about.”
That’s why the Vikings are excited about Nwangwu’s potential. With Dalvin Cook out, there’s a chance we could see more of him on the offensive side this week against the Detroit Lions (though he is listed as questionable with an illness) and down the stretch. He’s only carried the ball twice but picked up 16 yards in a flash.
So why wouldn’t the Vikings put him in and let him run wild?
“With most young backs, protection is always the toughest thing,” Zimmer said. “It’s not really running with the ball … it’s protections, it’s understanding your route concepts, where you have to be on certain routes and things like that.”
Smith agrees with Zimmer.
“He’s going to have to block at some point and if he doesn’t know who he’s supposed to block, he can’t step on the field,” Smith said. “If he doesn’t know who to block, he can’t step on the field, period, because he’s going to get somebody hurt, namely his quarterback, which teams don’t like having hurt.”
It’s always challenging for rookie running backs to learn how to pass protect because defenses are throwing many more pass rush looks than they’ll ever see in college. Not to mention that Nwangwu rarely played in pass-pro situations in college and missed a big chunk of the season with an injury suffered in preseason.
Zimmer noted that he’s still catching up on how the running scheme works.
“He’s still learning some of the run game … they call it, ‘where the dot is,’ and then trying to get to stretch that dot and bring it back the other way or continue to go to the perimeter,” Zimmer said.
No time to learn like the present. With Cook out, the Vikings are missing one of their biggest threats for explosive plays. While Cook’s replacement Alexander Mattison has proven capable, he isn’t a home run threat. Mattison hasn’t produced a run over 30 yards in his career.
So it’s next man up. Only the next man up is lightning.
“His top-end is definitely up there with the best I’ve seen,” receiver Adam Thielen said. “And you’re starting to see that more and more in these games…We’re going to need him moving forward to help us win football games.’’
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Do the nextgen statistics evaluate old film? If so what were the peak speeds of moss, sanders, etc. reached in an actual game?
Great article Mathew. Looks like he's another game time decision to.