Amber Searls-USA TODAY Sports
We’ve heard a lot this offseason about how much the physical training and conditioning program has changed for Virginia football players under new head coach Bronco Mendenhall. Today we got to see evidence that it’s working.
That’s wide receiver Keeon Johnson making it from the hashmarks to the middle of the field numbers in three hops. On a regulation NCAA football field, the hashmarks are sixty feet from the sideline; the tops of the field numbers are 27 feet from the sideline, with the numbers themselves being six feet tall. Making it to the middle of the numbers puts that at about 36 feet of total distance in three hops.
The world record for the standing broad jump is 12 feet, 3 inches, set by Byron Jones at the NFL Combine in 2015.
Maybe Keeon has been missing lots of class and has had plenty of burpee box jumps to get his hops in order. Whatever the explanation, based on the exclamations of disbelief you can hear in that video, we should all be impressed.