What Is the Wonderlic Test? Why Did the NFL Ban the Wonderlic Test for NFL Draft Prospects?

Sports heavily rely on statistics, and the NFL Scouting Combine is a significant source of such data. The official measurements of players in drills like the “40-yard dash, bench press, and vertical jump” play a crucial role in determining their draft positions in April. But what if the data is removed?

For the past few years, the NFL has been phasing out certain plays or rules. Currently, they are discussing banning a well-known injury-prone play called the “hip-drop tackle.” Amidst these discussions and changes in NFL rules, the Wonderlic test of the league, which has been prohibited since 2022, is resurfacing online.

Wonderlic Test banned by the league?

The NFL used the Wonderlic Test for years to assess the mental acumen of draft prospects, conducting it annually at the NFL Combine. However, this tradition has been discontinued. In 2022, the NFL decided to eliminate the Wonderlic Test, a 12-minute, 50-question cognitive assessment used during the NFL Combine. This decision came as a response to the test being viewed as outdated. The Wonderlic test, aimed at measuring intelligence, was historically criticized for various reasons, including leaks of supposedly confidential results and its perceived lack of relevance to a player’s on-field success.

Despite attempts to quantify players’ intelligence, there has never been a statistically significant correlation between Wonderlic scores and on-field performance. The NFL’s move to discontinue the test was part of a broader assessment of combine evaluations, deeming the Wonderlic an outdated process, as stated by the league’s executive vice president of football operations, Troy Vincet, in January.

Additionally, as per the reports, in 2022, “the league also revamped several of the activities in which Combine participants would partake, including some positional drills for wide receivers, tight ends, running backs, and offensive linemen.”

So, as the Wonderlic Test has been banned, have the teams stopped taking a mental assessment of the prospects?

The teams have opted for another method?

As per reports, approximately 2.5 million people worldwide, including around 300 NFL Combine football players, used to take the Wonderlic test each year. However, the test has been banned, leading the team owners to adopt new methods to evaluate mental aptitude.

One such test is the S2, used by fifteen teams since 2016. Unlike the traditional intelligence-focused Wonderlic test, the S2 assesses split-second decision-making abilities, particularly valuable for quarterbacks. Administered on a gaming laptop or similar device, the S2 measures perception speed, visual search efficiency, trajectory prediction, impulse control and improvisation.

Athletes spend 40 to 45 minutes on the exam, with recorded reactions accurate to two milliseconds. The tests include identifying missing points in flashing diamonds, recalling remembered objects, and quickly spotting specific objects in a mix of figures. While test scores are not public, leaked information revealed varying performances among prospects, such as CJ Stroud’s 18th percentile ranking, contrasting with his subsequent successful rookie season for the Texans (the third-most passing yards (4,108) by a rookie in NFL history).

So, these tests are just taken to assess general mental ability, as they have less impact on the on-field performance, as seen in Stroud’s case.

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