Falcons: ESPN Sport Science NFL Play of the Week Roddy White Catch

[Anomaly]

http://www.atlantafalcons.com/2011/10/li...-big-play/

Quote:When wide receiver Roddy White made an amazing fingertip grab for a touchdown against the Lions on Sunday, no one knew just how difficult or spectacular the catch really was. ESPN’s Sports Science takes a much closer look at Roddy’s amazing touchdown to show just how difficult of a snag it really was for the veteran wideout.

Did you know the pinky and ring fingers account for only 35 percent of the strength in our hands?

Now you know — and so does Roddy White.

White made a fantastic touchdown grab from Matt Ryan in Sunday’s win over the Lions, but perhaps we don’t really know how spectacular it was until now.

The play is being featured on ESPN’s Sports Science as its play of the week, and in an incredible breakdown of the play, ESPN shows just how improbable White’s fingertip catch on Sunday that was the difference in the game was.

With 30 seconds left in the first half against Detroit, Ryan lofted a rainbow to the back corner of the end zone, and White snagged the tail end of the fading ball with just his fingertips.

“Falling at roughly 40 (miles per hour), the ball would have been uncatchable if he had closed his fingers roughly three thousands of a second later,” ESPN Sports Science host John Brenkus said. “White’s fingertips locked onto the ball up to 3.5 inches behind its center, meaning a 27 percent reduction in circumference, making it a smaller target and a harder geometric shape to grip. And amazingly, White doesn’t even catch this cone shape with 10 fingertips — initially, he stops the ball with just the ring and pinky fingers, the weakest fingers of the hand, contributing roughly 35 percent of total hand strength, or about as much as the index finger alone.”

This piece will run within NFL-related programming and various SportsCenters.

View the video below.

Saw this on the NFC South blog today.

Quote:The Falcons are tied for No. 7 with 12 drops. They’re led by White with seven. He continues to lead the NFL, but we’ll go lightly on that since White hasn’t dropped a pass in the last two games and he could be overtaken this week as the Falcons have a bye.

[illmusic]

Its was nice to see him make that play...

[cnasty]

Roddy is finally starting to look like Roddy again. Now, if we can somehow figure to add Julio back to the gameplan without fucking up what we do, we could be even better.

[I Am The Truth]

I enjoy the way these Sports Science people breakdown stuff like this.

Bottom line? Roddy made one hell of a catch with two sets of the weakest fingers on his hand...while keeping both feet in just before stepping out of the back end zone.

Crazy.

[Hit Stick]

Truth of the matter is on this catch is it should have never been that 'spectacular' get your hands in the right spot and you don't have to deal with this insanity.

I'm glad he caught it, maybe he'll finally get rolling, but he's way off from what we're used to from Roddy, got a long way to go to be that 1000+ guy again.

[papachaz]

(10-25-2011 05:03 PM)Hit Stick Wrote:  Truth of the matter is on this catch is it should have never been that 'spectacular' get your hands in the right spot and you don't have to deal with this insanity.

I'm glad he caught it, maybe he'll finally get rolling, but he's way off from what we're used to from Roddy, got a long way to go to be that 1000+ guy again.

tell you what, meet me at any field you want and i'll loft one up and let you catch it with just your fingertips. you don't have to be running, or trying to keep your feet in bounds, or worrying about anyone knocking it away. after all, it's just getting your hands in the right spot, right?

[Radical]

He really doesn't have to improve on much to go over 1,000 again this year.

Right now he's averaging about 61 yards per game. On the year, that would put him at about 975 yards. All he has to do is average 62.5 yards per game to go over 1,000 for the season. I expect our offense to improve down the stretch, including Roddy White.

[RnB]

Thanks for the video Va. Its amazing when you break the catch down like that.

[JRid]

That was an amazing catch. Notice how he looks it in perfectly. I heard him say recently in an interview that he has been doing a lot of extra practicing and concentrating on looking the ball in instead of looking up field to see where to run.

[phocis850]

To me, it looked like he was late and was lucky.