Writers of Pro Football Prospectus 2008

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19 Feb 2009

Doug Farrar's Twitter Feed from Indianapolis

Click this link for Doug Farrar's Twitter feed from the scouting combine over at the Washington Post website.

Posted by: Doug Farrar on 19 Feb 2009

4 comments, Last at 21 Feb 2009, 11:14am by Temo

Comments

1
by Key19 :: Fri, 02/20/2009 - 1:48am

Wow, Vince Young seriously got a 6 on the Wonderlic? I already knew that was his score, but I assumed the test was MUCH harder than that kind of stuff.

2
by Pat F. :: Fri, 02/20/2009 - 6:00am

As I understand it, it's intended to be a speed test, not a brainpower test. You only have 15 seconds per question, so while none of the material is intended to be very difficult you need to keep up a pretty good pace making snap calls, not pausing to work things out.

So it's supposed to be somewhat reflective the sort of intelligence called for on a football field, where you have to solve a lot of relatively simple problems (generally figuring out where other players are going and what to do in response) very quickly. I'm not sure the Wonderlic really helps assess that ability, but that's the idea anyway.

ETA: Not that that makes Young's score any more palatable. Though I heard he has some sort of (legitimate) learning disability, which is why some teams excused the test...?

3
by zlionsfan :: Fri, 02/20/2009 - 2:04pm

It's actually supposed to be a combination of speed and brains, naturally with all the qualifiers associated with such tests (some people do better than others on tests, test scores may be correlated with intelligence but are not indicators of such in and of themselves, etc etc).

I think it's just something to add to the mix. If you have a guy who's a decent prospect with a high Wonderlic score, it's maybe a point in his favor, but it's not going to move him up a round. And I'd guess most teams would bump a guy down a spot or two solely for a low WPT score, but not much more than that. (After all, we've seen worse things about prospects that didn't knock them off the charts ... and silly things that actually do.)

FWIW, I took the WPT for the recruiting agency that placed me in my current job, and I got a 45. Unfortunately, I'm a little small to be an offensive tackle.

4
by Temo :: Sat, 02/21/2009 - 11:14am

Alex Smith and his great Wonderlic score sure panned out OK, didn't it?

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