We all know that Mike McDaniel is the chilliest coach in the entire league, and I do not say that ironically. My man decided mid-game to hit his vape and tried to act like no one would notice an NFL head coach needing a hit. Live television isn’t ENGL 3301 where the professor is also hitting your vape.
Sunday night, McDaniel’s was forced to give a halftime interview (I contend that news organizations making a coach give a halftime interview is somewhere on par with peeing in a man’s mouth while he’s sleeping in terms of the crime-comparison scale). Even though no halftime reporter has ever asked an interesting question – outside of Mike Leach questions – Mike made this interview at least worth it. Highlight Heaven called the interview “goofy” in an all-time dufus move by the nerd running that channel. The reporter asks him a question a well-meaning toddler could generate about how the game is going so far. To which Big Mike answers:
“I haven’t done anything; the players have done a great job executing some stuff.”
Mike McDaniel, All Time Players’ Coach
Absolute football guy move from him after another boring question from a person who’s job should be outsourced to Bing’s AI. But the reason I’m here is not to try and dismantle the dumbest profession in sports (and I’m including the stadium reporter who no one ever pays attention to). This blog is a part of an ever-evolving series I’m calling “Where Would Mike McDaniel Go in the Draft.” This is the first and possibly only installment.
Where in the World is Mike McDaniel
I’ll start this calculation by saying I have absolutely no clue if anything I’m about to do is right. I’m like Bill Nye speaking on actual science; sure, my words maybe make up for the fact I’m working off of college algebra, but we really need a Dolph Lundgren running these calculations.
In some world I should have been high writing this, so I have some sort of out, but instead I’m stone cold sober and ready to hit a stunner on the burning question. The first step is denoting where on the field McDaniels was when he began his sprint. But before that we just need to orient where he is on the field in general. So, during his interview, he’s on about on 32-yard line, as seen here:
When the interview finishes, I can see the sideline right behind him, so that places him pretty easily on the field:
Quick side note: I don’t know who this woman is, but she breaks the number one rule of cinema by looking directly into the camera. I can only imagine she’s doing this in solidarity with the striking actors, to which I say, good on you comrade keep up the good work.
Forgetting that sag in this blog, I can solidly place McDaniels at this position on the football field:
Why did I need this? Well, McDaniel begins to move and move diagonally when the interview ends and we need to track him well to when the sprint begins. The jog after the interview moves him to this position, at the 20-yard line, a little in front of the marked 20.
In the screenshot, the 5, 10, and 15-yard lines are visible ahead of McDaniels. This means the line he’s standing on is the 20-yard line and he’s moved about 12 yards, placing him about here on the field (including some slight horizontal movement):
Mike how now recognized the camera is following him, and while megamind has realized he can’t have a camera guy keeping up with him while running. How can you keep Tyreek at bay if he thinks you run like a child or a woman? Nonetheless, he ends up decelerating from his sprint about here on the field:
This looks to be about right at the nine-yard line, and almost in the center of the field. About here:
This is all the evidence I need to figure out what McDaniel’s 40 time is.
Quick Maths
First, I need to figure out how fast he covered the field. This will probably be the least accurate part of my calculations, because YouTube only gives me whole seconds. Using the scroll bar here is my estimation of when he starts: 48.4 seconds into the video. When he ends his sprint: about 50.8 seconds into the video. So with some simple math I find that the sprint lasted 2.4 seconds:
50.8 seconds – 48.4 seconds = 2.4 seconds
Next, the most math heavy part is to figure out how far he ran on the field. The 40-yard dash at the combine is run in an easy straight line. I would not be writing this article if we were dealing with an easy, straight line. I will accomplish this amazing mathematical feat using our old friend, the Pythagorean Theorem. For this I will need the horizontal and the vertical amount that McDaniel ran. The vertical amount is easy, because he started at the 20-yard line and ended at the 9-yard line, therefore running 11 yards.
The hardest part to figure out is the horizontal length McDaniel ran. Unsurprisingly given the Patriot’s history of lying (this isn’t about Deflategate, this is about their stupid “lighthouse”) Gillette Stadium’s field dimensions aren’t fully available online. The best I could do is find the Wikipedia dimensions but those aren’t incredibly helpful. So, I’m defaulting to the NFL’s official field dimension rules, even though I’m not sure if lizard man Roger Goodell is being fully truthful.
Taking the NFL at its word, from the left end of the right-center hashmark to the sidelines is 70 feet, nine inches. Now, with some more field soul reads I’m going to say McDaniel covered about two-thirds of that in the 2.4 seconds. So for more math:
Length (inches): 849 Inches
Length (yards): 23.6 yards
Multiplying 23.6 yards by two-thirds gives me the final horizontal amount run as roughly 15.7 yards. Visual description:
Now I have to go back to our old friend the Pythagorean Theorem, aka a2+b2=c2. So for some easy math I have:
(15.7 yards)2+(11 yards)2 = c2
Then:
246.49 yards + 121 yards = c2
Finally:
367.49 yards = c2
And finding the square root of 367.49 finds that McDaniel covered roughly 19.2 yards in those 2.4 seconds. This next step probably has a much easier way to do it, but like I said in the beginning I took college algebra so this is the best I can do. I’m also assuming that McDaniel would keep the same speed the entire time, and I’m using his pre-running start. Here is the equation I’ve landed at to find how many seconds he runs per yard:
2.4 seconds / 19.2 yards = seconds per yard
McDaniel’s SPYTM is 0.125 seconds per yard. Extrapolate that out for a 40-yard dash I find that Mike McDaniel’s 40-yard dash time is exactly 5.0 seconds.
In good conscious I can’t give McDaniel a great 40-yard dash time; it just seems wrong when coaches should be the least athletic guys on the sidelines. Also, I ended up making some major assumptions with this guess, like Mel Kiper every time he creates a draft board. I know McDaniel had a running start and there was no pressure. Given his running start it was easier for him to get the spectacular 5.0 second 40-yard dash time. I can’t find video of him getting up so I’m going to act like FIA and arbitrarily add a .5 second penalty to his 40-yard dash time. This means that Mike McDaniel’s official Moon Stamp Sports 40-yard dash time is 5.5 seconds.
This is now scientific fact until Mike McDaniel runs a 40-yard dash on camera to prove me wrong.
