are you smarter than a pro football player, pt. 2

To read: are you smarter than a pro football player, pt. 1

Jonah Lehrer takes on the Wonderlic Personnel Test from a neuroscience perspective. In his book, How We Decide, he devotes a chapter to Tom Brady's decision-making skills that led to winning Super Bowl XXXVI over the heavily favored St. Louis Rams, also known as the "Greatest Show on Turf."

The 199th pick in the 2000 draft and backup to Drew Bledsoe, Brady was facing an uphill battle as he led his team into the Super Bowl in 2002. With about a minute remaining in the game, Brady was looking at a championship if he could successfully decide which receivers to throw the ball to to get his team into field goal territory.

Brady made those decisions correctly in that minute and the rest has led to what looks like a future hall of fame career for Brady. Lehrer goes on to say that though Brady's draft profile had doubts about his physical prowess, his decision-making abilities were unquestioned playing his college career at the University of Michigan against the top competition in the nation.

Lehrer goes on to say the way NFL scouts measure a quarterback's decision-making abilities is the Wonderlic:

The underlying thesis of the Wonderlic test is that players who are better at math and logic problems will make better decisions in the pocket. At first glance, this seems like a reasonable assumption. No other position in sports requires such extreme cognitive talents. Successful quarterbacks need to memorize hundreds of offensive plays and dozens of different defensive formations. They need to spend hours studying game tape of their opponents and be able to put that knowledge to use on the field. in many instances, quarterbacks are even responsible for changing plays at the line of scrimmage. They are like coaches with shoulder pads.

The average score on the Wonderlic for a quarterback is 25. Though Wonderlic scores are not a concrete barometer of a quarterback's success in the NFL. Lehrer continues by saying vince Young reportedly scored a 6 on the Wonderlic and was successful at the time of Lehrer writing his book, before his breakdowns. Though there is a history of famously successful quarterbacks with below average Wonderlic scores which includes: Brett Favre with a 22, Dan Marino with a 14, and Terry Bradshaw at a 15. Lehrer also notes that Alex Smith and Matt Leinart both socred above 35 and have yet to make a name for themselves in the league so far in their careers.

Lehrer's point is that the Wonderlic does not address the kind of intelligence it requires to be a successful quarterback in the NFL:

The reason there is virtually no correlation between the results of the Wonderlic and the success of quarterbacks in the NFL is that finding the open man involves a very different set of decision-making skills than solving an algebra problem...The Wonderlic measures a specific kind of thought process, but the best quarterbacks don't think in the pocket. There isn't time.

Thus the NFL scouts that a wary of players who score low on the Wonderlic may miss out on the next Dan Marino or end up drafting a player based on an IQ score and not their football knowledge or decision-making ability.

But the Wonderlic is still a fun way for fans to measure their own intelligence versus their favorite football players.