NFL Prospect Byron Jones Just Set A World Record By Accident

The prospect from UConn broad-jumped an astounding 12’3″, setting the unofficial world record. 

You had one job, track and field athletes, and that was to not be bested by a guy who plays an entirely different sport. You failed.

UConn’s Byron Jones, who sat out the second half of his last season of college football because of an injury, just did the near-impossible at the NFL combine in Indianapolis. He broad-jumped 12 feet, 3 inches, which is – for those keeping track – a new world record. Given, the broad-jump hasn’t been an Olympic sport for 100 years, but the fact that no one has surpassed this distance, which again, Jones set by accident, is a testament to both Jones’s freak athleticism and the narrowing distance between track and field athletes and their professional counterparts. 

“I was surprised,” Jones told the Hartford Courant. “You’re able to see as soon as you jump, you can see the measuring tape, and I’m surprised because my first jump was actually 11-5 and I got coached to jump out, instead of up, and I did that and I came up with a big number.”

Jones also displayed a 44.5-inch vertical leap, just a half inch short of the record set at the combine last year. World records are out there to be broken, but usually people are trying to break them when they do. 

Photos by Associated Press