One of the biggest headlines from the combine were the jumps from Byron Jones, a cornerback from Connecticut. Most impressive was his broad jump, which was not only 8 inches better than everyone else in Indianapolis, but also 8 inches better than anyone else in combine history. More on his broad jump in a future post, but Jones’ 44.5″ vertical too shabby, either: it was the best since 2009, when Ohio State and eventual Chiefs safety Donald Washington jumped 45 inches (a feat later matched by one other player at this year’s combine).
But Jones didn’t have the most impressive vertical at the combine, because at 199 pounds, there’s an expectation that he would do fairly well in that drill. Given his weight, we would expect Jones to jump about 35.5 inches, based on the best-fit formula derived here, and defined below:
Expected VJ = 48.34 – 0.0646 * Weight
One way to think of that formula is that for every 15.5 pounds of player weight, the expectation on the vertical is one fewer inch. So at 230 pounds, the expectation would be 33.5 inches. Which brings us to Alvin “Bud” Dupree, whom we lauded yesterday for the top performance in the 40-yard dash. At 269 pounds, he would be expected to jump roughly 31.0 inches. Instead, the Kentucky edge rusher jumped a whopping 42.0 inches — or 11.0 inches over expectation — making it the best weight-adjusted performance of any player in Indianapolis.
Below are the results of the Vertical Jump for every player at the combine. All data comes courtesy of NFLSavant.com.
Using the data from NFL Combine Results, I checked to see where Dupree’s rating would rank among all players since 1999. It would rank 4th, with the top three being:
- +11.2, from Mario Williams, who jumped 40.5 inches at 295 pounds in 2005.
- +11.5, from Gerald Sensabaugh, who jumped 46 inches at 214 pounds in 2005.
- +12.4, from Cameron Wake, who jumped 45.5 inches at 236 pounds and yet somehow went undrafted in 2005. And did this a few years later.
Dupree was projected to be a first round pick before the combine. In Indianapolis, he did all he could to solidify that status.