If you’ve ever watched Ryan Fitzpatrick play quarterback during an NFL game, you probably already know he throws touchdowns and interceptions with equal regularity, has a beard and went to Harvard. What you may not know is the former seventh-round pick has the highest ever recorded score for a quarterback on the Wonderlic test, at 48.
(Another Harvard product, punter Pat McInally, is the only known player to get a perfect score on the Wonderlic. He was chosen in the fifth round of the 1975 draft by the Bengals.)
Designed in 1939 by Northwestern graduate psychology student Eldon Wonderlic, the Wonderlic is a form of IQ test that seeks to measure general cognitive ability in the subject areas of math, vocabulary and reasoning. Two-time Super Bowling-winning Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry began using the Wonderlic to evaluate players in the ’70s, and it has become standard procedure for NFL draft prospects to take the test in the decades since.
Though other positions take the test — offensive linemen usually have the highest scores, while running backs typically have the lowest — quarterbacks usually face more scrutiny for how they fare, and a bad score can cause a player to slide in the annual draft. For example, news that Alabama QB Tua Tagovailoa scored a 13 on the test when he was in college and a 19 at the NFL combine might be enough for the Miami Dolphins to pass on him with the fifth pick and instead go with Oregon’s Justin Herbert, who scored a 39.
While ESPN’s Adam Schefter said Tagovailoa’s score was “fine,” he did acknowledge it is a factor teams will be taking into account.
“When you’re as dissected as Tua is, you’re going to look at every single thing,” Schefter said on Get Up! on Monday morning. “What we’ve seen on the Wonderlic is not going to make or break him. It’s just one more log thrown into the fire as teams brainstorm to try to figure out whether or not he’s going to make it big at the next level.”
But does a quarterback’s Wonderlic score actually have any correlation to predicting future success in the NFL? Based on the data that’s available, the answer is … maybe.
Take Fitzpatrick, for example. With a score of 48, his Wonderlic mark is twice as good as the average quarterback score of 24. After playing for eight teams across 15 NFL seasons, it is pretty clear Fitzpatrick isn’t twice as good as your average NFL quarterback. In fact, with 210 career touchdown passes compared to 161 interceptions and a record as a starter of 55-83-1, the 37-year-old is about as average as you can get. But he has led a long and successful career despite no one expecting him to go that far, and his intelligence probably has something to do with it.
For comparison, let’s also take a look at reigning Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes, who is widely considered to be the best quarterback in the NFL at the moment. The 24-year-old quarterback scored a dead-average mark of 24 when he took the Wonderlic.
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Counting Mahomes, the last 10 Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks — Tom Brady (33), Nick Foles (29), Peyton Manning (28), Russell Wilson (28), Joe Flacco (27), Eli Manning (39), Aaron Rodgers (35), Drew Brees (28) and Ben Roethlisberger (25) — had an average Wonderlic score of 29.6.
But when you look at the last 10 quarterbacks to win the NFL’s MVP award — Lamar Jackson (13), Mahomes, Brady, Matt Ryan (32), Cam Newton (21), Rodgers, Manning, Steve McNair (15), Rich Gannon (27) and Kurt Warner (29) — the Wonderlic average falls all the way to 25.7.
Obviously it’s a small sample size, but those numbers indicate that while an above-average Wonderlic score indicates a higher chance of winning Super Bowl, an average score is all that’s required to secure MVP.
Of course, there are also many examples of above-average quarterbacks — Bret Favre (22), Deshaun Watson (20), Michael Vick (20), Terry Bradshaw (16), Dan Marino (16), Donovan McNabb (15), Jim Kelly (15) and Vince Young (6) — who have gotten below-average marks on the Wonderlic.
Given all that information, it seems evident that a quarterback’s Wonderlic score isn’t nearly as important as his arm, health or ability to take coaching well in the NFL. A high score like Fitzpatrick’s is nice, but it doesn’t offset him having a worse arm than a lower-scoring quarterback like Marino or lacking the intangibles of an even lower-scoring QB like Kelly.
A relatively low score like Tagovailoa’s isn’t a great sign heading into the draft, but if a team has faith in his arm talent, athleticism and the steely nerves he showed in leading an epic comeback in the National Championship game in 2018, it certainly shouldn’t deter them from calling his name.
His problematic hip, on the other hand …
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