When the NFL turns on the lights in Lucas Oil Stadium next Thursday evening and holds its annual combine drills on prime-time television for the first time, all eyes will be on former Alabama wide receiver Henry Ruggs.

Ruggs, who was timed in the 4.25-second range for the 40-yard dash at the Tide’s junior pro day last year, is the betting favorite to run the fastest 40-yard dash in Indianapolis.

Expectations for Ruggs’ teammate of the past three seasons, Jerry Jeudy, are not quite as high. The over/under for his 40-time was set at 4.4 seconds, compared to 4.38 for Ruggs.

Jeudy’s own goal is much faster than 4.4 seconds and if he achieves it, he could turn heads.

“The first time going into training I ran a 4.44,” he told ProFootballTalk last month. “I’m trying to go down to a 4.3, possibly a 4.29.”

During an interview with NFL Network the same day, Jeudy estimated he would run the drill in 4.34 seconds.

So how does Jeudy shave a tenth of a second or more off his time? That task falls on Bryan McCall, the high performance director for Michael Johnson Performance outside Dallas.

Jeudy and three of other NFL draft-bound Alabama players -- cornerback Trevon Diggs, safety Jared Mayden and outside linebacker Terrell Lewis -- have spent the past month-and-a-half at the facility founded by Johnson, the Olympic gold-medal winning sprinter.

The weekly schedule includes weight-lifting and running work, including refining 40-yard dash times, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Three other days -- Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays -- feature position-specific training.

There are more than 40 draft prospects at Johnson’s center this winter, and McCall begins his assessment of their 40-yard dash by measuring various splits of the distance during the player’s initial test.

“I think [Jeudy] would be, on his baseline, top 10 in the country at the receiver position, just coming in,” McCall said this week.

In Jeudy’s case, the troublesome part of his run was his initial 5 to 10 yards. That meant McCall adjusting Jeudy’s start mechanics, including his posture, alignment and foot placement.

The rest of the run was not a problem.

“He’s a tremendous back-end speed runner,” McCall said. "Back-end 20 [yards], he can fly. He’s just naturally fast. ... He’s probably one of the fastest guys in the country [in the final 20 yards of the dash].”

As a program, Michael Johnson Performance on average can speed up a prospect’s 40-yard dash by two-tenths of a second, according to McCall, before the combine. But McCall finds less room for improvement with already-speedy players, so he expects improvement from Jeudy of about 0.15 seconds.

While the facility did not disclose Jeudy’s exact baseline time entering training, improving his starting speed has the potential to push his 40-yard dash into the low 4.3-second range, or perhaps the high 4.2-second figures -- as Jeudy suggested at the Super Bowl.

“I think that’s the expectation going in," McCall said of a time in the low 4.3 range. "From his standpoint and ours.”

Jeudy running in the low 4.3s would undoubtedly solidify his projection as an early-to-mid first-round pick.

Yet even if the 2018 Biletnikoff Award winner as the nation’s best receiver falls short of his own goal and remains in the 4.4-range, it would not seem to hurt his draft stock. An NFL scouting director polled by AL.com said Jeudy is a likely top-15 pick regardless of his 40-time.

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Achieving a time as low as 4.29 seconds, though, would place Jeudy among a small group of players who have posted sub-4.3 times in Indianapolis. It has been done by only nine players in NFL.com’s official combine records dating back to 2006.

Three of those times, including the top mark of 4.22 by former Washington receiver John Ross, have been recorded in the past three combines.

“Guys are getting faster. You can tell,” said McCall, who has trained NFL prospects at the facility since 2014. “We train younger athletes from an earlier age, middle schoolers to elementary. We’re teaching them some of the principles that someone like Jerry Jeudy is learning. You’re seeing these guys come up through the ranks."

A former assistant strength and conditioning coach for Florida State in the early 2000s, McCall has seen training for players shift from the weight room to more speed-oriented work on the field.

“The game is getting faster,” he said. “You’re leveraging some of the weight room aspects to try to get guys get faster. So it’s really now, it’s about speed. Speed in all directions -- not just linear, but multi-directional speed, as well.

"If you’re not understanding speed and kinematics and kinetics, it’s going to be hard to be competitive in this industry anymore.”

Here are McCall’s thoughts on the three other Alabama players’ 40-yard dash training:

On Terrell Lewis: “We’re really trying to work on not necessarily the start, because what I’ve noticed is guys who come off the edge and have to rush [the quarterback] are really good at start mechanics naturally because their sport requires it. Their position requires it. He’s got to get a little bit better in the middle of the race. Now you’re talking about power. Melting down that 40 from that 10-15, 10-20 yard aspect. He’s really been focused on some power training with his legs. We think that’s the strategy that’s gonna help him run his best 40.”

On Jared Mayden: “Mayden is very similar to Jeudy. He’s got to work on his start mechanics. He’s pretty decent at the back end and pretty powerful in the middle. But again, he’s gotta take the brakes off and make sure he doesn’t over-stride and puts his foot in the right spot at the right time.”

On Trevon Diggs: “Diggs is just fast. This kid can run. He’s strong in the 40 at the start. Powers right through the middle and has tremendous top-end speed. He might be the cleanest out of all of them, as far as coming in ready to go.”