In 1999, a promising young director named Doug Liman was dispatched to Florida to work on a commercial with Tiger Woods, then still in his wunderkind phase. The shoot was scripted, and Liman, who would eventually direct “The Bourne Identity,” was part of a team that had only eight hours with the star. Liman noticed that during breaks, Woods, visibly bored, would juggle a golf ball with his club head. The ball never hit the ground. While the crew ate lunch, he grabbed a camera and asked the star to do the trick again. Woods juggled the ball more than 40 consecutive times — around his back, between his legs, sitting it on his club face, never dropping it — before thwacking it down the fairway in mid arc. The 30-second spot became the 1999 equivalent of a viral video, in large part because it laid bare Woods’s superhuman talent.

This same sort of thing happened a few years ago to Jason Pierre-Paul, another freakishly gifted athlete. Before the 2010 N.F.L. draft, Pierre-Paul was considered a high-risk, high-reward pick at defensive end — the quarterback-rushing and outside-run-stopping position that has become the cornerstone in many pro defenses. Despite his obvious physical gifts (he can nearly wrap his arms around a mailbox), Pierre-Paul did not know much about football. He barely played in high school, and his only season of Division I ball was spent at the University of South Florida, a program with a history that dates back to 1997 and whose best-known alumnus was playing in the arena league.

Then Pierre-Paul appeared on ESPN’s “Sports Science” show, a mash-up of “SportsCenter” and “The Big Bang Theory” that breaks down how athletes hit massive home runs, block shots and race cars in 130-degree cockpits. Dressed in full pads, Pierre-Paul, then 21, jogged to one end of the set and launched into seven consecutive backward handsprings. It was a feat that would have been routine for a 5-foot-4 gymnast but was made astonishing by the fact that Pierre-Paul is 6-foot-5, weighs around 270 pounds and was in full pads. If a wall had not been in his way, he could have done 23. The video has received more than a half-million YouTube views, including, presumably, more than a few by N.F.L. general managers.

Unlike baseball and basketball, football is a sport in which raw athleticism alone can be a true game changer. Less than one month after his appearance on “Sports Science,” the New York Giants made Pierre-Paul the 15th overall pick in the 2010 draft. It was a carefully hedged bet, given that the Giants already had three quality defensive ends — Osi Umenyiora, Justin Tuck and Mathias Kiwanuka — and could afford to bring the rookie along slowly. But no one could have foreseen that injuries would harass Umenyiora and Tuck and push Pierre-Paul into the starting lineup early in his second season. And few could have foreseen that his raw physical talent would make him such a dominant player so quickly. In a crucial December game against the Cowboys, Pierre-Paul recorded eight tackles and two sacks (including one that went for a safety) and blocked the game-tying field goal attempt with four seconds left. The next week against Washington, he tackled 11 ball carriers all by himself, and assisted on five more tackles. An elite player would be happy with about half as many.