Chattanooga cornerback Buster Skrine made a big impression at the NFL Combine last week, but just how much he improved his draft status might depend in part on which measurement of his 40-yard dash times is most believable.
The NFL Network unofficially timed the All-Southern Conference performer as running 4.29 and 4.36 seconds in his two attempts. Those are blazing-fast times, close to the Combine record 4.24 that Titans running back Chris Johnson ran in 2008 when he was coming out of East Carolina.
Watching Skrine run was enough to excite Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders, an NFL Network analyst, who said: "It's nothing technical, but just seeing that kid's first step, I was like 'Oh, he's got something!' He had a burst. He was low, he was smooth, and that was just one step."
Sanders added: "If he's a project, that's a project I can work with."
So it was a little surprising to learn that Skrine's official times, as clocked by National Football Scouting, were both posted as 4.48, neither of which put him in the top-10 times run by defensive backs at the combine.
Why the discrepancy?
"I'm not sure why that was," Skrine said by phone after returning from Indianapolis. "But me and my agent, we talked to numerous scouts and they had me as low as a 4.27 and the high was a 4.33. So I really don't know how I got posted as a 4.48. It's weird. But as long as the teams have their times, it's fine."
The good news for Skrine was that he posted some impressive official numbers in other Combine fields: Skrine officially had the fastest time in the 60-yard shuttle run (10.75), and he was second-fastest in the
20-yard shuttle (3.90) and the 3-cone drill (6.44).
"It felt good," said Skrine, who had five interceptions in four seasons at Chattanooga. "Some people had been saying I had tight hips. I don't know where they got that from, and they also (had) said my ball skills were a question. I've never had trouble catching a ball.
"I really wanted to prove those two things weren't questions in my game. I caught every ball and looked good in the turning drills and all the footwork drills."
The 5-foot-10, 186-pound Skrine will try to impress scouts even more at Chattanooga's pro day
March 23. But he feels like he's already headed in the right direction in the eyes of the NFL.
"Before I went to the Combine I was probably a mid-round to later-round pick," said Skrine, who is rated the 13th-best cornerback by The National Football Post. "That's understandable, just because I'm a small-school prospect. But after the Combine, many scouts told me my stock's going up, so that's always good."
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