What's a good 40-yard dash time?
A good 40 depends on your position, your level and how the time was taken. The NFL combine and two studies of college players timed electronically give you averages to measure against, once you know how your own time was taken.
NFL combine averages
| Position | Average since 2003 | 2026 average |
|---|---|---|
| Wide receiver | 4.52 | 4.44 |
| Defensive back | 4.53 | 4.44 |
| Running back | 4.59 | 4.45 |
| Linebacker | 4.71 | 4.55 |
| Tight end | 4.76 | 4.63 |
| Quarterback | 4.82 | 4.60 |
| Defensive line | 4.94 | 4.83 |
| Offensive line | 5.26 | 5.10 |
Since 2003: NFL.com. 2026: ProFootballTalk. The combine record is Xavier Worthy's 4.21 in 2024.
The combine invites the fastest college players in the country, so an average time there would be elite by any other standard.
College players, timed electronically
Two studies timed college football players with electronic gates. Mann et al. (2015) measured 81 Division I players at 5.12 s on average, give or take 0.35. Mayhew et al. (2010) measured 59 Division II players at 5.16 s, give or take 0.28. Those averages cover every position, linemen included.
High school
We couldn't find trustworthy public averages for high school 40 times by age. Most charts online don't say where their numbers came from or how the times were taken. The best study we found, McKay et al. (2020), tested 7,478 high school players and publishes norms by position and grade, but only for the 10 and 20-yard splits, and the tables are paywalled.
A better comparison for a high school player is their own time from three months ago, taken the same way.
Before you compare
A hand-timed 40 reads 0.2 to 0.3 s faster than an electronic one, so a hand-timed 4.6 is closer to a 4.85 on gates. Hand vs electronic timing has a conversion table. The start matters too: a standing start triggered by the first gate runs about 0.27 s faster over 40 m than a block start with a gun, according to Haugen and Buchheit's review of sprint testing.
Splits tell you more than the total. Two players at 4.70 can get there with different 10-yard splits and different top speeds, and they need different training. Sprintbrick shows you the split and the top speed on every rep. Against OVR gates, our segments after the first 10 m came within 50 ms, and we're still refining how it times the start. Full results.