No Dumb Jox Allowed

[MavKikiNYC]

The NFL's Smartest Team

Each year, NFL hopefuls take a standardized intelligence test. As the results leak out, Sam Walker tallies the scores of more than 1,000 players, and asks: Does it take a genius to win at this game?

By SAM WALKER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 30, 2005; Page W1

On the football field this season, the St. Louis Rams are having a decent but unremarkable run. They've won two of three games, scored eight touchdowns and rank 13th in the National Football League in total defense. But according to one index, the Rams may have already laid claim to an unusual title.

The NFL's smartest team.

Each year, far from the gaze of fans, hundreds of college football players with ambitions to play in the NFL are herded into classrooms, handed pencils and asked to take a 12-minute standardized test with 50 questions designed to measure cognitive ability. NFL teams long have tried to keep the results secret -- even though scores for some top prospects often are leaked. Now, some sports obsessives are putting together databases gleaned from NFL scouts and other insiders, and it has become possible for Web-surfing fans to find bootleg test scores for almost any lowly safety and long snapper.

So we decided to use the numbers to see if we could figure out which team is the NFL's brainiest. Collecting test results from Web sites, published reports and people close to the NFL, we verified as many as we could with agents and teams and calculated the average scores for each team.

The exam, the Wonderlic Personnel Test, has been given to millions of job seekers in dozens of fields, and across the broader population the average score is 21. We found that the Rams offense averaged a 27, putting their scores on par with those of chemists and engineers. The first five players the Detroit Lions picked in the 2005 draft had an average of just above 28, while the Dallas Cowboys' three quarterbacks posted a mind-boggling average of 39, which puts them squarely in the company of the mental elite.

On the other end of the scale, we found a winless team whose 19.1 average is similar to the typical Wonderlic score for hospital orderlies. (Sorry, Green Bay Packers fans).

'Run People Over'

Though we were able to track down scores for only 1,021 players, roughly 60% of those in the 32-club league, the results suggest that picking the right answer to a question about the price of apples may mean that your team scores more touchdowns. Our smartest four franchises -- the Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders and Tennessee Titans -- have each played in a Super Bowl in the past five seasons. And nine of the past 12 Super Bowl teams showed up in the top one-third of our compilation.

Of course, with the exception of a few positions like quarterback, intelligence hasn't exactly been considered a prerequisite for football success. In the past, the job description of most NFL players was something like kill the quarterback, or in other cases, run people over. For players in the most brute positions, the test results hardly mattered at all.
[football] KNOW THE SCORE

See how pro teams performed on the Wonderlic intelligence test and how players at the biggest football universities measure up. (Adobe Acrobat required.)

But as the NFL prospers as a business, with the market values of top franchises pushing $1 billion, owners have been turning to coaches who promise more on-field wizardry. Meanwhile, the league's strict economic system, where every team is held to the exact same budget for players, has spread out the talent and rewarded teams that find innovative ways to make the most of the players they have.

One casualty of all this: the old football stereotypes of bigness and dumbness. In addition to being able to tie their own shoelaces, modern players are expected to impress teams with the speed of their mental processors. "We've made a religion of it in the last few years," says Rams coach Mike Martz. "So long as he plays at a high level, we'll always choose a guy that is smarter."

In some cases, the egghead approach seems to be paying dividends. The Chicago Bears' starting tackles and ends (27 average) anchor a defense that hasn't allowed a rushing touchdown. San Francisco cornerback Ahmed Plummer (39) is that team's leading tackler. And if you're wondering why Tampa Bay is second in the NFL in rushing yards, here's a possible explanation: The average test mark for the offensive line is a 30 and for guards a 34, which is four points higher than a typical attorney's score. "I'm not surprised," says Buccaneers general manager Bruce Allen. "I trust my guards more than most attorneys."

The Wonderlic Personnel Test was created in 1937 and has been administered to more than 120 million people. According to Michael Callans, a spokesman for Wonderlic Inc. of Libertyville, Ill., the closely held company that provides the test to NFL teams, this isn't an I.Q. test that's designed to measure the outer limits extent of a person's intellectual capacity. Rather, it's a tool that measures how well people comprehend problems -- and how quickly they can solve them, as it requires test-takers to spend less than 15 seconds on each, on average, in order to finish. Here are two sample questions*:

1. When rope is selling at $.10 a foot, how many feet can you buy for sixty cents?

2. RESENT RESERVE -- Do these words: 1) have similar meanings; 2) have contradictory meanings; 3) mean neither the same nor opposite.

Introduced to the NFL by Cincinnati Bengals owner Paul Brown in the late 1960s, the Wonderlic has since become a rite of passage. It's given to college players during private interviews with teams, visits to college campuses or at the annual NFL scouting "combine" in Indianapolis, where prospects are put through their paces in front of a consortium of NFL teams.

Spotting Problems

For years, the Wonderlic was essentially given as a way to spot players who might have mental deficiencies, the way a team might check for signs of glaucoma. In the increasingly complex NFL, where it's no longer possible to stockpile superior athletes at every position, coaches don't build their game plans around stars, but often focus on exploiting the other team's weakest links by creating mismatches.

NFL teams are less interested in raw athleticism than a player's ability to line up correctly and follow the proper dance steps. If the coach calls "zero type wing ride," for instance, each player has to know instantly what to do, where his teammates will be going and how to adjust to the other team's behavior.

In this environment, low test scores can be a sign that a player may be a "repetition guy," who needs to see something over and over before it sinks in. "You need to 'get it' quick," says Mr. Allen of the Buccaneers. "We don't have a lot of patience in the NFL right now."

Floyd Reese, the general manager of the Tennessee Titans, says players who score high on Wonderlic are often better suited to carry out his team's complex defense. Over a period of years, he says, the playbook has grown thick with coverages, combinations and alignments, some of which haven't been used in a year. "Woooh, it's thick!" Mr. Reese says. "I don't know if I could memorize it now. Out of college, no way."

In general, Mr. Reese says he prefers smart players who might lose the occasional physical battle over gifted athletes who struggle to learn the system and make silly mistakes. One example: defensive tackle Jared Clauss, who wasn't drafted until the seventh round because teams thought he wasn't big enough to be a tackle or fast enough to be an end. When the Titans saw his 45 Wonderlic score, they figured he'd be able to master both positions and play them adequately. So far, Mr. Clauss has taken the field in all three games and been one of the team's most consistent linemen.

Meeting of the minds: St. Louis Rams gather before a postseason game earlier this year. The Rams top the league in scores on the Wonderlic, a standardized test the NFL uses in recruiting.

As for the Rams, our egghead prizewinners, the team has a Harvard graduate at backup quarterback, a free safety from Stanford and a wide receiver named Kevin Curtis who happens to have the highest Wonderlic score we found among active players, a 48. To make this offense tick, lineman have to master multiple protection "packages" and some receivers have to learn four positions. It's so complex that the Rams don't even have a playbook: Mr. Martz calls it a "system book" instead. "It's like algebra," he says. "Once you learn the equation, you can solve problems."

It seems to work. In six years this offense has led the team to two Super Bowls, set an NFL record for total yards in a season and produced three MVP awards.

The Wonderlic test isn't infallible. It's no secret that some agents hire tutors to help star clients prepare, and that some players just don't take it seriously. It can also be unfair: Before the 2004 draft, Central Missouri State linebacker Roderick Green was projected as a high pick, but after he posted a score of three, he went undrafted until the fifth round. Only later was it discovered that Mr. Green has a learning disability. His team, the Baltimore Ravens, considers him an excellent pass rusher; he has the team's only sack this season.

Private Investigators

Indeed, this test is only one method teams use to measure cognition, and it is rarely the most influential. Nearly all teams administer exhaustive psychological tests. Paraag Marathe, director of football operations for the San Francisco 49ers, says Wonderlic makes a difference only in "rare instances" when all other factors between players are equal. Before drafting any player, Mr. Allen of the Buccaneers conducts long personal interviews. "As a solid C+ student, I hate to think a test grade is a great indicator of how you do in football," he says.

To try to prevent Wonderlic results from being released, the company that runs the NFL combine, National Football Scouting Inc. of Tulsa, Okla., has closed the event to team employees and eliminated the old practice of printing test scores on easy-to-disseminate handouts. When the combine ends, the company burns all the scores onto 32 DVDs and sends them directly to each NFL team's headquarters by FedEx. Jeff Foster, National Football Scouting's director, says the company has even hired outside investigators to trace the leaks. "They're being sold," he says.

In the meantime, the Rams don't seem likely to loosen their grip on the top spot. Already, Mr. Martz says he's been impressed by his quarterback of the future, Harvard's Ryan Fitzpatrick, who scored a 38. And while the Rams locker room may look similar to others in the NFL, he adds, there's already one subtle difference. "You see a lot of people working crossword puzzles, I can tell you that."

[#1MavsFan]

while the Dallas Cowboys' three quarterbacks posted a mind-boggling average of 39, which puts them squarely in the company of the mental elite.

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-blush.gif[/img]

[snoop]

maybe hensons talent will catch up with his mind, lord knows he has it somewhere.