Here's the thing about watching Sonny Styles post a 43.5-inch vertical jump.

You see a number, and then you think about what the number means, and then it takes a moment before it actually registers. That's the highest vertical jump by any player 6-foot-4 or taller since 2003. He is a linebacker. He weighs 245 pounds.

Think about that for a second. Really think about it.

A 245-pound linebacker standing flat-footed and leaping more than three and a half feet straight up. That's not a figure skating move. That's not gymnastics. That's a grown man who plays football for a living, a man whose job description includes fighting off 330-pound offensive linemen and chasing running backs through gaps and dropping into zone coverage against tight ends, and he can leap out of a gym.

What that number actually means on the football field is this: Sonny Styles can change direction in the time it takes most people to blink. When his feet are on the ground and he reads a run play, the time between recognition and reaction — the thing coaches call closing speed — is going to be terrifying for running backs for the next decade. When he's dropping into coverage and a tight end tries to break across the middle at the second level, Styles can close from eight yards away and be in position before the ball arrives.

We talk about athleticism like it's separate from football. Like the measurements are one thing and the player is another. They're not separate. That vertical jump shows up every single time he sets his feet and drops into a zone, every time a running back makes a cut and Styles has to change direction in one step, every time a quarterback throws a crossing route that Styles wasn't supposed to be able to reach.

Ohio State puts out linebackers. That's just what they do. Styles is the best one they've sent here in a long time.

The combine ends this weekend. The players will go back to their pro day training and then to their teams. But for one afternoon in Indianapolis, we got to watch a 245-pound linebacker prove that some people were built for this game in a way that the rest of us can only watch and appreciate.

That's worth stopping for. That's worth paying attention to.