Dillon, Mobile, Alabama During the Senior Bowl practice, Gabriel did not break the NFL combine passing velocity record. At Hancock Whitney Stadium on Tuesday, Gabriel, who holds the NCAA career touchdown record, did not even attempt the fastest pass.
However, it didn’t stop a false tweet that compared Gabriel’s top initial air speed on Tuesday of 74.9 mph to the NFL combine record of 62 mph from going viral. The post received over a million views, and several commentators questioned its veracity.
Dom Russo, supervisor of client services at Zebra Sports, which supplies data services to the NFL and Senior Bowl, stated that the initial air speed is the pace at which the quarterback releases the ball from his hand. You won’t see it the same way you would with a radar gun. It will be two whole distinct entities.
I find that pitching a baseball is the most straightforward analogy: When a baseball is thrown by Randy Johnson at 100 mph, it is 100 mph when it crosses the plate, not 100 mph when it leaves his hand.
Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills and Joe Milton III of the New England Patriots both hold the combine passing velocity record, which is a stationary throw at a wall from a certain distance. Every throw the quarterbacks make during practice, including individual drills, 7-on-7, 11-on-11, uncovered receivers, one-on-one games, throwing from the pocket, and on-the-run, is included in the Senior Bowl passing data that Zebra has accumulated.
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Russo did not know which of Gabriel’s passes had the highest velocity, but he did say that all throws are timestamped and that NFL teams receive the data for evaluation along with practice footage. The throws are tracked by RFID tags in the footballs.
Officially, Gabriel’s greatest initial air speed of 74.9 mph places him seventh out of 48 quarterbacks who have participated in the Senior Bowl since Zebra started working with the all-star game in 2018. Former Houston quarterback Clayton Tune leads that group with 76.8 mph.
Due to the incorrect comparison, which lacked additional context, Russo witnessed the social media frenzy that broke out Tuesday afternoon and continued until Wednesday. Seth Henigan of Memphis led the seven quarterbacks on the day with a top initial air speed of 76.6 mph, while Jalen Milroe of Alabama recorded a high speed of 75.4 mph.
After viewing this, I thought, “Oh man,” Russo remarked. observing the remarks. When we were working with engineering, they said, “It’s not a radar gun. We need to clarify initial air speed so people don’t get confused and compare it to that because it says that.”
Of the seven quarterbacks at the Senior Bowl, Gabriel’s longest air distance of 51.9 yards on Tuesday placed him sixth. He led the group in both average air distance (19.8 yards) and average initial air speed (48.2 mph). He placed fourth with his average spin rate of 536.9 RPM and his greatest beginning spin rate of 663.6 RPM.
Terminal velocity of passes is another helpful metric to compare passing strength and speed until Gabriel and the other quarterbacks in this year’s class travel to Indianapolis for the NFL combine next month. According to Russo, Zebra monitors passing parameters such as terminal velocity, but the numbers are not made public.
Russo stated, “We’re not trying to release everything, and those ones we haven’t quite dove into as much.” In contrast, we have a far better notion of what RPMs and starting air speed look like.
–The Oregon Ducks and Big Ten are covered by James Crepea. Get the Ducks Roundup email or listen to the Ducks Confidential podcast.
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