Carnell Tate had the chance to run again, to chase a cleaner number. Instead, he let the clock sit untouched at Ohio State’s pro day. His 4.53-second 40-yard dash from the NFL Scouting Combine was a topic of conversation, but he didn’t flinch. Because for him, the story seems to be about everything that happens after the ball is snapped, and not only running in a straight line.
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When Tate calls the 40-yard dash “overvalued,” it doesn’t come off as a dismissal so much as perspective. He’s seen how the league actually works, how production doesn’t always correlate with pre-draft sprints.
“I definitely think it can be overvalued,” he said, via ESPN’s Daniel Oyefusi. “Like a couple of great NFL receivers right now like Puka [Nacua] and Jaxon [Smith-Njigba] like they probably didn’t run the fastest of times, but they’re the two best receivers in the league right now.”
His choice to skip the 40 seems to be calculated, as, according to him, teams hadn’t raised concerns about his speed, and more importantly, he didn’t feel the need to chase validation through the drill.
Carnell Tate said he considered running the 40-yard dash again at his pro day but ultimately decided against it. Tate, a projected top-10 pick, said the 40 can be a bit “overvalued” and cited top NFL WRs such as Puka Nacua and Jaxon Smith-Njigba who didn’t bave blazing 40 times. https://t.co/fzwaO9gBz7 pic.twitter.com/paILmAPmTB
— Daniel Oyefusi (@DanielOyefusi) March 25, 2026
Tate has spent the weeks leading up to the draft meeting with teams, including several picking near the top. Again, those conversations, by his account, haven’t centered on speed.
And maybe that’s the point. The league, for all its fascination with measurables, still runs on trust, on whether a quarterback believes you’ll be open, whether a coach believes you’ll execute.
During the pro day, his routes weren’t rushed. Each cut had intention, each break just sharp enough to create space that did not look obvious until it was already there. He caught passes the way people finish sentences: clean, assured, without needing to repeat themselves.
Nacua (with a 98.2 score on PFSN’s WR Impact Metric) and Smith-Njigba (94.4 WRi) are receivers who did not arrive with blazing times (Nacua ran 4.57 and Smith-Njigba ran an unofficial 4.48) but stayed because they understood the subtleties: leverage, timing, feel. The kind of things that don’t trend on draft boards but quietly win games in October and December.
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And that’s where Tate seems most at home, in the quiet accumulation of details. His game isn’t built to overwhelm in a single moment; it’s built to endure across four quarters, as Ohio State head coach Ryan Day praised his overall physicality.
Last season offered its own evidence: 51 receptions, 875 yards, 9 touchdowns. Numbers that don’t scream as much as settle in, steady and dependable. So Tate didn’t run again. He ran routes instead. He caught the ball. He let the day breathe a little.
