Manti Te’o has run his long-awaited 40-yard dashes at Notre Dame’s Pro Day, and Te’o was a little faster today than he was at last month’s NFL Scouting Combine.
Todd McShay of ESPN timed Te’o at 4.75 seconds in his first 40 and 4.71 seconds in his second, and that was the general consensus of the other reporters on the scene: Te’o improved upon his 4.82-second 40 from the Scouting Combine by somewhere around one-tenth of a second.
So will this matter? It certainly won’t hurt: Te’o said after the Combine that he’s “obviously” faster than he showed in Indianapolis, and now he can back that talk up with his times.
But a difference of one-tenth of a second in the 40 is probably not going to make a huge difference for Te’o. We talk about 40-yard dashes at this time of year because we don’t have much else to talk about, but what really matters is how a player plays football. The teams that had doubts about Te’o before today will still have doubts, and the teams that liked Te’o before today will still like him.