Re: Zombie vs An NFL Lineman

I also disagree with Drew’s “You don’t want big guys” logic. Since Joe already detailed the various ways in which an NFL lineman would be useful to your zombie survival efforts, I would like to take a step back and further analyze the fallacies in Drew’s anti big guy stance.

The main crux of Drew’s argument centers on his assertion that big guys “can’t run as fast”. This line of thinking is misguided by a perception of relativity. Sure an NFL Lineman is not as fast as an NFL wide receiver or running back. And since the only environment we’re used to seeing these men in is that of an NFL game I can understand how many people would perceive these men as slow.  However, that is not the case with this scenario. We have been asked to choose 1 NFL player to add to our group of otherwise presumably average humans. There is a common joke (I’m sure many of you have heard) that goes “you don’t need to be able to out run the bear…just your slowest friend” and while that exact statement does not apply here the general mentality is accurate – your group of survivors is only as fast as your slowest member.  Having Chris Johnson sprinting away from zombies with his 4.24-second 40yd dash does you no good if you can’t keep up (and trust me you can’t).

So now that we’ve established this scenario a little better, the question becomes will an NFL lineman slow you down? To answer this, let’s do a little “Tale of the Tape”. Since Haloti Ngata was mentioned specifically in the original question I’ll use him as our example and take a look at the 6’4” 340lb man’s his NFL Draft Combine results from 2006 (note: since the pre-draft combine is really the only time NFL players are officially measured these are the measurements we must rely on. It is likely that after a 7 year NFL career – where his entire life revolves around physical performance – his measurements may have improved across the board).

Lets start with pure straight-line speed. To measure this the NFL uses the 40-yard dash. At the 2006 Combine Haloti Ngata ran the 40 in 5.13 seconds (an average time for an NFL Lineman). Now I consider myself to be a fairly in shape individual, and have always been relatively fast when playing sports amongst my peers. However I have never run a timed 40 yard dash in under 5 seconds. In fact my brief research seems to indicate that your average in shape individual would run a 40-yard dash in about 5-6 seconds. In other words, Ngata is not slowing down your group of survivors simply by being slow, and should still be easily capable of outrunning any zombies in pursuit of him .

Skipping over for now the  3 cone drill and 20 yard shuttle (because nobody outside of NFL scouts really knows what a good time is, much less how it might be applicable  to a zombie apocalypse) lets move on to a simple test of strength, the bench press. At the NFL Combine, the athletes are asked to bench press 225lbs as many times as possible. In 2006 Haloti Ngata did this 37 times. Shit most people I know can’t even lift that once. I tried to find bench press results for the fastest wide receiver from 2006, but most of the wide-outs didn’t participate in the bench press at the combine, likely because they didn’t want to be embarrassed by how weak they are. For further reference, when Ngata was still in college (the only official measurement I can find, again, I’m sure he has improved this by now) his 1 rep max was 495lbs. That’s like 3 people.

UPDATE: More likely than not, your zombie survival team is going to consist of at least a few women. So how will they stack up compared to our NFL lineman? I managed to track down some of the all-time records for the University of Maryland’s Field Hockey team. These girls are elite athletes playing for arguably the top field hockey program in the country. But how do they stack up against the example of Haloti Ngata? The top 3 40 yard dashes ALL-TIME for the field hockey players are 5.05sec, 5.11sec, and 5.14 seconds. All respectable times, but essentially the same speed as Ngata. If we take a look at the top 3 Vertical Jumps we get results of 27, 27, and 25.5 compared to Ngata’s 31.5. This number was pretty eye opening to me, despite his gargantuan stature, Ngata can still get up. When you consider the strength numbers that he produces (discussed earlier) I wouldn’t be surprised if Ngata could throw some of those girls higher in the air than they could jump (while comical to think about, its something I can picture being pretty useful in certain situations).

So think about those numbers for a little while and then tell me again… What NFL player would you choose to join your zombie survival team?