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.
