Are You Smarter Than an NFL Quarterback?

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

I did notice you had some pretty thick soles on.

Okay.

A lug sole is a fashion choice.

It is a fashion choice.

Right after this ad.

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So I'm playing hurt today.

Yeah, I can tell.

You sound like you should not be here according to 2023 standards of what we do with sickness.

I was.

Are you sick?

No.

Okay.

I have tested negative for all viruses.

You've been clearing yourself

into the microphone for like the last 10 minutes.

And so I just want to know what's wrong with you.

So I went to a holiday party on Friday and I just because I was talking loudly over like the din of the room.

So it's not that you're hungover, it's that you're gas bagged too much.

Come on, dude.

I'm just constantly, I'm like drinking my tea.

It's f ⁇ ing.

You sound like you're going to choke.

I should point out.

That I've been thinking a lot about choking recently.

So I was watching the NFL this weekend, Cortez, and I've been monitoring one particular subplot, and it involves a team that has been choking the Carolina Panthers.

The Panthers, you may remember, just fired the head coach, just fired the quarterbacks coach.

Josh McCown.

Josh McCown, love that dude.

The people that the fans of the Panthers are going to war with, though, seem to be anybody who told them that Bryce Young was going to be awesome.

Bryce Young, the number one overall pick, 2023 out of Alabama.

He just did this against the Bucs on Sunday.

Young will throw up fourth out.

He's directing traffic for Thielen.

Thielen had, he can't get it, it's intercepted.

Antoine Winfields.

That makes the Panthers now 1-11, I believe.

Correct.

1-11.

Bryce Young has been dog

all season, and they traded up to take him.

Remember, he was going to be the savior, but instead, he's been failing every exam and choking repeatedly.

It's a first and ten and young.

Underneath, it's picked off.

And here comes the veteran, Kenny Moore.

Chased by Young.

That is a pick six.

Here's Bryce Young.

He's got time here, and he throws it.

It's intercepted.

It's Deron Blanding again.

Bland looking for another pick six and he's got it.

It's bad.

That footage cut my heart.

Like it really hurt me as a short king because I'm rooting for the fellow short king and he's embarrassing us out here.

I'm just cough, cough, laughing.

Horrible.

So, the thing that makes this all that much more horrible for the Panthers is that C.J.

Stroud, who's the quarterback out of Ohio State, who they took number two overall, the Houston Texans did.

Right behind Bryce, yeah.

Right behind Bryce Young, just beat the Broncos on Sunday to get the Texans into playoff position.

They're now seven and five, and he's been awesome.

Yeah, he's been looking like this.

Ton of fun to watch.

Stroud on first down.

He was looking downfield.

He's going downfield toward toward the end zone.

Dow, leaping grab.

He's got it.

157 passes without a pick.

Stroud tosses it up there and caught by Jordan.

That's just CJ Stroud having a ridiculous amount of ability.

Stroud to the end zone.

Touchdown.

Take Dell.

CJ Stroud.

Leads a magical drive.

This

young man is special.

Yeah, the dude has set records for passing yards through 12 games for a rookie quarterback.

He was offensive player of the month in the AFC in November.

He just won back-to-back games with game-winning drives.

First rookie to do that in, I believe, 40 years.

It proves nobody knows anything with quarterbacks.

It is one of the hardest things to do in all of sports is to pick quarterbacks.

Correct.

Right.

It's incredibly difficult.

No one is confident in doing that.

No one should be confident, at least.

But one way that they try to figure out who is actually a potential franchise guy is that they test for intelligence, right?

Because this is not just an athletic position.

It is a position in which your brain, your decision-making, your processing, all that stuff is incredibly important.

And so this is a storyline that came up when C.J.

Stroud played the Falcons in week five.

After the Wonderlick test, the scores weren't great, shaking a preseason debut, some said, but since then, he has impressed.

He's been unbelievable.

And now, if I was in charge of the players association there is no way any of my players would ever take a wonderlick test again because it's completely unfair and this kid has just been awesome a frost of body beautiful placement and this is what this kid has done so you know the wonderlick test who gives a rip it is rare that i agree with mark schlareth i will say stink

manly manoff but i do agree with schlareth here like why are we testing these guys in this manner but mark schlareth was also crucially incredibly wrong about the details in that call.

Because the Wonderlick test, actually,

I don't know if people know this, the Wonderlick was stopped as the thing that every player had to take at the Combine, the three draft thing, last year.

Okay.

So, last year, it was for the first time not required for every prospect to take it.

The thing that CJ Stroud did bomb, though, the test he did fail, the intelligence test that he got an 18 out of 99 on okay was called the s2 test that sounds like a terminator robot not like a cat like a sat test the s2 is the thing that's replaced the wonderlick and it's the thing that has also raised the eyebrows of like our smart nerd friends who i've been talking i've been talking to them all month about this test what they think of it and a lot of them think it's just bullshit

because in part cj stroud is awesome and because bryce young who sucks, got a 98 out of 99.

What a nerd.

But what is not controversial is the fact that intelligence testing is kind of the holy grail in the NFL, for quarterbacks specifically, and also in sports as people try to figure out, okay, scouts, executives, GMs, who's actually talented enough to be a superstar, to be a franchise guy for a team.

And so what I wanted to do was figure out, okay.

who's somebody who is themselves a number one overall pick,

a phenomenal test taker, and someone who played like utter dog as a rookie quarterback in the league.

And I wanted to find out from them: can we actually test for intellect?

Can we actually measure how smart somebody is in a way that actually matters to their performance as an athlete?

Yeah, whether this is bullshit or not.

Yes.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Are you going to take the test?

Well, yourself?

Now that you mentioned it.

Come on, dude.

I've been.

Bro, you sound horrible.

You sound so bad.

These tests.

This is ridiculous.

Are Are you doing a bit?

Like, what is this?

I should probably take another test before I take those.

You should take medicine.

I'm going to take multiple tests.

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Alex,

I want you to know that I think of you as an intelligent person.

Thank you.

I mean, you know, listen, I don't want to come up with any Harvard Ivy League jokes for you.

You know, I feel like every person I know from Harvard or the Ivy League, they just drop it randomly in sentences more often than not.

Like nobody else talks about their alma mater

as much as people that went to Harvard.

You know, and it just is, it just constantly comes out.

But no, thank you.

I appreciate that.

I was kind of hoping you would say what you just said in response to me complimenting you in that way so I could point out that, in fact, yes, I did, I did go to a certain school outside of Boston.

Yeah, that's right.

Like a junior college or something?

Okay, so that is the voice of my old friend and ESPN Daily colleague, Alex Smith, who graduated from the University of Utah in two years and got taken number one overall in the 2005 NFL draft by the San Francisco 49ers.

In no small part, by the way, because of his intellect, as no less than Mel Kuyper Jr.

explained repeatedly at the time.

As I said, and this cannot be understated, smartest player ever to go from college to pro, processes information so quickly.

An offensive coordinator's dream because he's an extension of the coordinator of the head coach.

No mistakes are going to be made in translation with Alex Smith.

But the offensive coordinators in San Francisco were a nightmare for Alex because he had seven of them.

And then he got traded to the Kansas City Chiefs, where he became the personal tutor to his backup.

Patrick Mahomes.

Having Alex man,

I'll forever say it, man.

It probably made my game jump three steps

when I could have took three years to get those three steps.

Yeah, I had seven offensive coordinators in six years in San Francisco, man.

I mean, he literally had to learn the trial by fire, and he taught me how to not make those same mistakes.

And so that's how Alex Smith helped make the greatest young quarterback who has ever lived.

And that is how Mr.

Smith wound up going to Washington, where his new head coach, Jay Gruden,

had again a familiar scouting report.

One thing about Alex, he's the smartest guy I've ever been around, without a doubt.

I know a little bit about your biography.

Not a lot of it, but a little bit.

I mean, you took some, like your dad was the principal of your high school, which means that you took, you're already kind of like rolling your eyes at this memory.

Well, yeah.

So my junior and senior year when, you know, all my friends were, especially senior year, taking like light class loads and, you know, senioritis and.

you know, doing whatever they want, kind of having fun.

I didn't even get to make my own schedule.

Like my dad was the principal, so academics were obviously really important.

So I took every AP class there was.

What a nerd.

I ended up taking, I think I took like 14 AP tests by the time I left high school.

I had so many more than I ever

all of which brings me around to this idea that in the NFL,

you got labeled smart guy.

Yep.

Some of your NFL coaches have called you literally the smartest guy they've ever been around.

It's so funny.

I remember, you know, even getting ready for the draft and it was kind of the same thing.

You're going to take this Wonderlick.

The Wonderlick test tells NFL scouts how smart their prospects are.

It goes way beyond football.

The Wonderlick test is also frequently used by Fortune 500 companies to help assess possible new hires.

The Wonderlick test has been a staple of NFL player evaluation since the 1970s.

The Wonderlick tested math, vocabulary, and logic and had visual puzzles.

Folks out there could probably Google Wonderlick questions at this point and they can get them, but like it has nothing to do with football, Pablo.

It's actually like this very logical-based.

Oh, I want to, this is why I've summoned you here: is to ask if you remember what you got on the wonderlick.

I think I got like a 40 or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so Alex Smith for the record here got one of the top 10 published quarterback scores on record.

Um, a 40 out of 50, 50 points scale, um, 50 questions, 12 minutes.

Uh, slacker.

Yeah, I know, I know.

What the f do you get wrong?

There's the difference right there, Harvard and Utah.

Well, but but hold on, though, because the wonderlick for people who don't know,

how do you describe what it is, what it was?

This was easy pickings, Pablo.

Like, and I even, the crazy part is you, you know, you, once you declare to come out pro and you get an agent, like, I took three or four practice wonderlicks and they graded with the, you know, like, you'd get the results back time.

So I, I mean, I walked into that.

Really, really comfortable, you know, but certainly I thought about some of my peers, like, depending on your background, where you grew up, like, again, this had nothing to do with football.

So

I cannot emphasize enough what you're saying there.

As, yeah, by the way, the number one overall pick in 2005 to the 49ers, because I took a Wonderlick test, a practice test today, right before this.

I got a 44.

There we go.

So you'd have been a hell of a quarterback, Pablo.

And I want to say for people who don't know, and I only got to, so it's timed.

Yeah.

So there is a, the time is real.

I only got to 49 questions.

I didn't answer all of them either.

I think I answered all but three.

Exactly.

So I get progressively harder for everybody out there.

They start really easy and the back half of it is, they take longer, they're wordier.

It's funny.

Like I went back and looked at the questions I got wrong because that's how I'm a kid who had SAT tutoring before the SAT, of course, because I went to, I don't know, maybe you've heard of it.

I went to Harvard.

I studied my ass off for that thing.

Here's a sample question from the Wonderlick I took today.

Which word does not belong?

Okay, four options.

Optician, orthodontist, dentist, optometrist.

I'm going optician.

You got this right.

So, okay, so I was like, are we just insulting opticians here?

Like, they didn't have the credentials of the other.

Is that what the right answer?

That's why that's the right answer.

The other three all work on people, right?

An optician is

classes.

classes like i'm assuming

now i'm just embarrassed i don't know i think you're exactly guessing i chose dentist because it didn't start with an o

but all of which is to say that these questions have a lot to do with quarterbacking no doubt i'm glad you i honestly i don't know if anybody's actually like revealed what these tests are like how did you take it by the way was it on like a scantron not a scantron like a bubble just like a stapled sheet of paper like in the corner and i'll never forget the three days the whole world like descends, football world that is descends on Indianapolis.

And yep, you're all in your under.

Yeah, you honestly are.

You want to talk about like cattle, like poked and prodded and at the hospital a long time.

Cause I mean, if you sprained your ankle in high school, they're going to MRI it and look at it.

Obviously, the vast majority of the combines physical, and it's an audience of scouts and GMs and coaches.

Like it's so crude, dude.

It's crazy.

And you're up there and they measure every single part of your body and call it out.

Yep.

And like, and announce it.

I mean, it's uncomfortable.

The wonder, like, right, in terms of results,

Brian Fitzpatrick getting a 48 makes sense.

You getting a 40 makes sense.

Eli getting a 39.

Colin Kaepernick got a 38.

Andrew Luck got a 37.

Romo, Tony Romo got a 37.

Aaron Rodgers got a 35.

Like, some of this does track, just broadly speaking.

But at the same time, when Dan Marino gets a 16,

it's weird that this was so important and unchallenged for so long.

And the lack of football, which is obvious to you, raises the question of like, what does intelligence for a quarterback specifically, what does that really mean to you?

Well, going back to your original question, like the fact that

I could take a few seconds to, you know, for me, make an educated guess that it was optician

has absolutely nothing to do with me doing my job at an NFL level, like the actual intelligence that is required.

Hey, come on now.

Hey, one at a time, huh?

Locked in one at a time.

You know, the seconds that take place between me getting the play call in my ear, stepping into the huddle, calling the play, like having to regurgitate that, obviously having to digest it, potentially give out reminders to anybody.

Hey, G-Doll's coming.

Hey, just trying to look him up.

Great job.

Hey, great job.

We break the line.

We get up to the huddle.

I have my pre-snap tails as I'm looking at the defense.

Is it first and 10?

Are we in the third down?

Like, what's the situation of the game?

Boom, I snap the ball.

And then now we're talking in like fractions of a second, like micro seconds here, your analysis and decision making and processing, like to go from like A to B to C, you know, and then,

God forbid, that the right guard doesn't block his guy, and then all that shit's out the window.

Alex Smith stepping up in the pocket, trying to keep the play alive.

Now he'll he'll run.

Break out of the pocket.

Don't get sacked.

Now at this point, find a guy on the run, make a play.

Smith rushed from the pie.

Couple's on the run,

and it's caught.

It just has nothing to do with deducing which one of the words didn't go with the other three.

Right, right.

So this was a thing that they mandated at the combine until last year.

Honestly, the most important thing of all that, that all the crap that I just went through is not so much do you have the intelligence and processing, but kind of do you have the guts, the confidence, the calmness, given the, you know, the stage to do it all?

And that's probably even more important.

The pressure, like performing under pressure.

Yeah.

Like, does, do you have it there?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how do you measure that?

I want to help help

people who scout players and talk about sports with the vocabulary of this whole exercise.

If it's not intelligence, which can mean you aced the verbal part of the SAT, which I can imagine both of us did,

it's

what is processing?

What does it mean?

Is it decision-making?

How are you characterizing what the skill is if it's not intelligence as has been previously defined?

what would you love to test for when it comes to a quarterback um that you're about to potentially give nine figures to it's kind of the ability to get into a flow state

given

just large strong

guys

trying to rip your head off

You know, Miles Garrett is just crushing the left tackle, play in and play out, and he's hit you 15 times.

They've been hitting you all day.

You've been getting beat up and crushed.

And then all of a sudden, a big third down in the fourth quarter.

Can you sit in there and like lock in?

There's so many people's job on the line.

Not only your teammates and coaches and the scouts, but I'm talking like the equipment room, the film guys, the trainers, and all their families.

Yes.

Can you lock in?

Time slows down almost, and you're so locked in on what you have to do

to execute a play.

So in the midst of all of that stuff, like external distractions, internal distractions, right, from the pressure of the situation in the moment, that it just is, you're unflinching.

You described a very unique job.

Like I just think, I think about Brock Purdy.

Mr.

Irrelevant, 2022,

with the 262nd pick in the 2022 NFL draft, the San Francisco 49ers select Brock Purdy, a quarterback from Iowa State.

I mean, he was a four-year starter at Iowa State.

How was was it that nobody was able to identify what it is that, you know, like those traits?

Right.

Last pick of the draft is what he ends up being, despite all the stuff that, again, with hindsight, we can now discern.

Yeah.

So is there a test that like, you know, you could administer?

That simulates.

I know there's new like tests as far as like processing that they put kids through.

Yes.

No, that's so to get to where the NFL is going now, they've tried a couple replacements.

S2 Cognition delivers the leading digital evaluation that is scientifically validated to measure these cognitive abilities that have been unquantifiable until now.

The S2 eval is designed to analyze how athletes see, think, and react to in-game split-second decisions.

It shows who the game breakers are and how to develop them so that you can build to win.

Okay, so that, to be clear, is a marketing video for S2 Cognition.

This is the company that has become the de facto replacement for the Wonderlook test, as aforementioned, in terms of how the NFL measures the brain power of college players.

And the S2 actually first took off in Major League Baseball.

And this test, they say, is all about trying to measure cognition, how quickly the human brain reacts and processes information.

Like in baseball, for instance, Is this pitch a fastball slider change up curveball?

That's the sort of speed of decision making that they're testing for.

And here, in football, it's basically about solving puzzles as fast as possible.

It's blocking out the noise.

Having a feel for the pressure.

Adjusting when things break down.

But the problem now with S2 cognition is that the biggest thing breaking down is the quarterback who aced their test.

Because Rice Young did get 98 out of 99 on his S2 exam, and that did help him get picked number one overall by the Panthers.

And the Texans, by contrast, got C.J.

Stroud and his 18 out of 99 on the S2, which is, again, utterly abysmal.

And C.J.

Stroud is not just the best quarterback in the 2023 draft, it seems like.

What CJ is doing.

It's the greatest rookie season we've ever seen.

Yes.

In the hardest position in sports.

Yes.

Right.

And there's not a single thing that he's, you know, from a maturity, from a processing, from the actual physical play on the field that hasn't just been absolutely astounding.

And this is coming from a guy, Pablo, that take it.

I've had, I had one of the worst rookie seasons in the history of football.

To see what he's doing and how hard it is and how easy he's making it look is just, it's,

it is ridiculous.

Something that does suck is when.

Your test is, it got leaked.

Yeah.

It sh be.

It's very clear, Alex, that

the NFL sports in general, but specifically with quarterbacks, they're dying to figure out who the smart ones are because we now know, oh, it turns out the brain is an important thing.

It's an important body part, this whole thing that processes and makes decisions.

No doubt.

You know, and

I think there's only one thing left to do, man.

I think you got to take the S2 test.

Maybe we should see if we still got it, Pablo.

You know?

All right, Alex Smith, on behalf of both of us, overachieving, standardized test takers, I vow to take this test and see if I am a better quarterback than C.J.

Stroud.

That's after the broke.

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All right, so in front of me is a rig.

White keypad,

seven buttons,

athlete identity confirmation, big green button that says launch.

And I got like 45 minutes, so let's

find out how good I am.

Oh boy.

Ah, f.

F does that mean?

Mother fing.

Alright, so what you need to know about the S2 test before we get to my test results here is that it is absolutely nothing like the Wonderlick.

Insofar as there is none of that SAT style vocabulary and reading comp and basic math question bullshit.

The book smart stuff that Alex Smith and I clearly mastered in our AP classes.

Because the S2, it turns out, does not need you to have like learned a single fact or formula or definition before even sitting down to take it.

It is mostly just a series of shapes, of abstractions.

of balls and diamonds and triangles that flash across a black screen for fractions of a second.

And you to react according to a set of instructions that were designed by a scientist who was watching me here in our studio this entire time

behind the glass.

So, so Brandon Alley.

Yes.

Hello.

Hi.

You're a neuroscientist.

Correct.

You're the man who just subjected me to whatever the f that was.

And I apologize for cursing, although.

It'll make you curse.

Yeah.

No problems here.

I was going to say, how unlike my experience

is the sample of athletes, how many now that you've tested over however many years?

Yeah, we've tested about 40,000 athletes over the last nine years.

Yeah.

And your response is

on par.

There's a bit of, I don't want to make this all about me, but we need to at the top here because

I experienced a bit of like standardized test taking PTSD.

Yeah.

As I was becoming self-conscious about what my results were saying about me.

Yep.

And apologies for the sweat that I think pooled all over your like hyper-responsive keypad.

Yeah, no, I totally understand that, right?

And that is a unique aspect of what we do.

You know, we're in the science sphere.

We're evaluating athletes for a variety of reasons, but obviously test anxiety and getting that sense of, okay, I'm not doing well here.

And one of the things that our test is built on is trying to find what your cognitive capacity is on these things.

So we're pushing the limits.

We're intentionally making you.

Yeah, we're trying to make you fail to fail.

Found out you were with me.

Well, we were, Pablo.

Not far from it, right?

So, you know, I can understand that sense of failure.

And when you think about elite athletes, they're not used to failing.

So they don't know oftentimes how to deal with that.

Now, obviously, we have on the other side of the spectrum front office saying, if they can't handle this, then how are they going to handle a Sunday?

So of all of those people among the NFL class,

who are the people

who

stick out to you as guys who just ace this thing?

Yeah, there are a number of players that I think that we can talk about simply because they've been in the media a lot.

When you start thinking about, you know, your Josh Allens, your Brock Purdy's, Patrick Mahomes, Drew Brees, Joe Burroughs, those guys scored really, really well.

Like we're talking like A plus.

Yeah, above the 90th percentile.

Above the 90th.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because somebody scored above the 90th percentile, does that mean they're going to be Patrick Mahomes or Drew Brees?

No, it doesn't.

It just means they have the cognitive wiring and capacity to do that.

I want to get to how we got here with S2 as this instrument that is both incredibly valued by all sorts of people across the NFL and just prolifically shit on recently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's let's anchor it in the present tense and the controversy.

Let's teach the controversy, Brandon, right?

Because the last draft has become, it feels like this crucible of public opinion for you guys.

Yeah.

Number one overall is Bryce Young out of Alabama, a guy who is familiar with the S2 test reportedly.

He scores a 98, which is, as someone who just took this test, unfathomable, right?

I am in awe of whoever can do that, just on an objective level.

But on the other end, we have C.J.

Stroud, who scored reportedly in 18.

And C.J.

Stroud, the S2 test was the reason, purportedly, that C.J.

Stroud was not taken, number one overall.

Right.

And so how do you react to all of that?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, obviously it's a, it's a, it's a numeracy thing, right?

So when people were writing about us, about Brock Purdy, uh, and race the test.

We raced the test and then, you know, last guy taken and is playing, you know, very well.

Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, all these people came out.

They kept saying, oh, we need more data.

That's not, that's not real.

But then when CJ takes it, you know, and then so now we get shit on for one test.

Twitter searching C.J.

Stroud S2.

Yes,

but it's not good for my mental health, right?

I imagine impulse control hard to manage.

And that's

CJ's a phenomenal quarterback.

right he reads defensively

very good getting

poised he's super accurate right all of those things um but look you know,

we are not allowed to talk about what CJ specifically scored.

We're not allowed to talk about his effort on the test.

It hurts us that the public can't look at all of our data.

Yeah, it kind of, it sucks.

It sucks for me for sure.

But the people who use the product have access to all of that data.

Those data are owned by the NFL.

consortium teams and they have say on that and there's not a chance in hell they would let us release scores.

We've seen all of these stories.

I certainly personally feel like there were leaks that were intentionally happened for a specific narrative.

Well, I should say that like the way this all gets out is because this reporter, Bob McGinn, gets access, seemingly to a trove of S2 test results.

And S2 is the new Wonderlick.

And so this is now freighted with great meaning.

Right.

And various front offices, including, by the way, the Panthers front office in ownership.

David Tepper, the owner of the team, seems to be an analytics guy, put stock into S2.

All of this stuff seems to be a way of decoding

the intelligence and the likelihood of success as these various teams see it and these players.

And your response to just the tests that were leaked, just because I want to get on the record here, is what?

Because the 18 is like,

that's a thing you guys are going to wear, seemingly

for all time.

I want to hear about it forever.

And that's part of being in pro sports.

Like, look, it's a tough business, right?

And

undoubtedly

year,

something negative comes out behind the draft, right?

And we just happen to be on it this year.

So,

again,

a low score doesn't mean you can't play, right?

It doesn't mean you're not going to make it.

A high score doesn't mean you're going to be an all-pro quarterback.

We're more interested in how does CJ, how to Bryce process information.

Nobody has a crystal ball.

But it is worth pointing out here that what Brandon and S2 are selling is the closest thing currently to a crystal ball on the matter of a player's brain power.

What they specifically claim using their own proprietary sample and analysis is that a quarterback's Wunderlich score, for instance, accounts for less than 0.1%

of an NFL quarterback's eventual career passer rating.

But a quarterback's S2 score that explains or predicts roughly 30%

of that same NFL career passer rating.

It's a thing which raised the eyebrows of my most statistically fluent friends, just as a matter of magnitude, when I explain this to them.

Because what you should know here is simply that 30%

is f ⁇ ing enormous.

If you think there is an NFL team out there drafting a player based on S2 alone, you don't know sports.

You don't know football.

That is just not ever going to happen.

Now, if there was some narrative built out there that, hey, we're going to take this player because he scored 98, or we're not going to take this player because he scored 18, I think people are happy to use S2 as a scapegoat rather than saying, oh, we could potentially be making a mistake, right?

So there's no team out there that is drafting off of S2.

S2 is one piece of the puzzle.

You've got to put it in context of this kid's play speed position right so let's take a guy like miles garrett

fastest defensive end ever right now miles did great on the s2 but let's say he didn't as a defensive end if you can run over somebody around somebody to get to the quarterback it doesn't matter how many objects you can track right am i right i was going to make this point so it's just one piece of the puzzle that that that management is using to help reduce uncertainty when you start thinking about,

okay, how does he make decisions?

So if it's a receiver that can run 4-2, and we've had that, can we handicap that 4-2?

So if he's slow on the decision-making, maybe he plays like a 4-4 or 4-5 guy.

That's helpful.

Not saying, okay, well, he scored low on the S2.

We're not going to take him.

But let me ask it this way, because I now like to imagine you watching football on Sunday.

And if I'm you, I'll put it that way, because I don't want to assume you're cognitive wiring.

I am rooting for the guys who aced this test to be awesome and I'm rooting for the guys who bomb this test to be terrible.

That is an interesting way to think about it.

I think if I was concerned with Johnny in Columbus, Ohio, who is a CJ Stroud fan and that's who I was trying to impress or that's who I was trying to work for, I could see that.

The teams that we work with across all sports, that's not the way they use the tool.

They're not going to call me tomorrow and say, you know what, CJ had five touchdowns and 500 yards yesterday.

We're ending this contract.

Yeah.

Like, that's just not, that's not the reality of it.

It's, we have a lot of dialogue around players about how they're best going to be utilized, what situations they're going to do well and what situations they're going to struggle in.

It's not, should we take CJ?

Right.

Should we take Bryce?

Honestly, and that's the f ⁇ ed up part of this whole thing was like when people started shitting on us, they, they act like we something first off we said nothing at all with the leaks yeah like we i hope to god cj tears it up we love that as a matter of fact that is what drives a scientist okay right the 98s

crushing it no

the 30s crushing it We can learn something from that.

We can learn something from that athlete.

What makes him special?

Is it that his coordinators are really good at programming around him?

Is it that this dude can overcome?

Or is it as you experience today?

If you mailed it in and gave 80% effort today, what do you think your score would have been?

Let's just say on the effort level, I maxed out.

Yeah.

And I was struggling to keep my head above water, man.

So I'm not going to comment on CJ's effort because I wasn't there.

But I should add here that a source told us here at Pablo Torre finds out that CJ Stroud's score was flagged with the words questionable data in real big letters on the top of his S2 results.

And apparently about 10 to 20 players get flagged like this on average every year, sometimes because they just didn't try or didn't care or were too tired to do either.

And we did, of course, reach out to CJ Stroud for an interview to clarify all of this and more.

But a Texans official wrote us this, quote, we slash he are moving past the S2 test and we're not looking to give it any more life.

That story and test are far in the past for CJ,

end quote.

Which just means that the best we have at the moment in terms of self-scouting from CJ Stroud is what he told assembled reporters back in April of this year.

I'm not a test technique, so I play football.

The people who are making the picks know what I can do.

So that's all that matters to me.

There's a whole bunch of people who know how to coach better, know how to play quarterback better, know how to do everything on social media.

But

a man in the arena, that's what's tough is stepping in the arena to hold.

So, and I'm standing at it.

I want to voice that skepticism from like my NFL expert friends who, when I DM them and I'm saying, this S2 thing, what do you think?

My smartest friends, what they say is

this is not the same as bullets flying on a field.

This is not actually like, and I suppose until further notice, a gaming laptop with shapes moving around cannot possibly replicate what it is to be out there on a football field.

It cannot.

Let me take your argument a step further because we work with special forces and we work with law enforcement.

Okay.

So literal bullets fly.

Yeah.

Impulse control for a quarterback, you throw a pick.

Yeah, it's costly.

It sucks.

Impulse control for a cop who can't control the impulse to pull the trigger when somebody pulled out a cell phone is life-changing.

So again, we're doing our best.

We're taking the best tools in the cognitive sciences to measure that impulse control system.

Can I predict how an officer will operate when he feels like his life is in danger?

I cannot.

I will be the first to admit I cannot.

What can I do?

Can you give me a really good proxy for whether we feel like his brain is capable of doing it?

That's what we're doing.

Right.

We're not telling you C.J.

Stroud is going to go out and suck.

CJ Stroud is going to go out and throw for 500 yards and five touchdowns against the Bucs.

That's not our job.

But what you are saying is that given this range of outcomes based on our archive, our database of thousands upon thousands of examples,

here is what the probability is looking like if you score X,

what will happen to you in the NFL?

Right.

And again, as we've talked about with a lot of variables, got to be, a guy's got to be locked in.

He's got to give his full effort.

He's got to give a shit about this test.

If the 18 for CJ is legitimate, he is proving a lot of people wrong, including us, about whether our test measures exactly what we can do.

What I will say is that he is beating the probabilities, not proving us wrong.

And so, if there is anything that the CJ Stroud experience

has taught you, what is it?

I think that CJ has taught us that there are probably

many players that have overcome limitations, whatever they may be, to be highly successful.

There are a lot of ways that one can be successful in the NFL, and it's not reliant on one thing like arm talent or decision-making or S2

or whatever it is.

There are a lot of ways to be successful and you need

a lot of tools to be successful.

And I think that,

again,

maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot here, but we've been trying to predict human behavior since the beginning of time.

And it turns out we're really bad at it.

I was going to point out, Brandon, my general rule of thumb when it comes to the NFL draft or a draft in any pro sport is that

nobody really f ⁇ ing knows anything.

It's hard.

It's hard.

I mean, the bust rate in the first round alone is like almost 50%.

So again, if you're going to knock us for being wrong even 20% of the time, we're still all right.

We're still helping make informed decisions.

All right.

So give me, give me, give me the truth,

Brandon.

You actually did very well on the S2 test.

I just want to tell Dominique Foxworth, one of my best friends in the world, former NFL cornerback, to go yourself.

Now, let's let's let's talk about this in reality.

Yes, please, please.

So I'll just go down by each one and we'll go over your score.

So perception speed.

All right.

Performance test.

It's never good when you're like, is the right answer to 10 questions in a row A?

You're at the 34th percentage.

Yeah, that was horrifying to me.

Which, you know, these are also age-dependent.

Okay, great.

So your ability to search through visual chaos and locate a target.

I saw when I meant to press it.

It's moving fast, man.

All right.

Ah, f ⁇ .

Sometimes I'm pressing it, and then I see it right as I press it.

And I'm like, oh, that was a pick.

Ah, f.

You're at the 41st percentile.

Okay.

Yep.

Okay.

Your ability to broaden your attention and track many moving objects.

All the balls are moving.

I have to follow the balls that have been highlighted.

This is like watching three-card Monty.

Man.

I'm going to be fing terrible at this.

Yep.

Way off.

Very good.

There are so many

falls.

15th percentile.

That that that felt like like I should be um

like I should be in a home somewhere like doing that test.

I was like, oh yeah, don't let me out in public.

It's not easy.

No.

Um yep, your instinctive learning.

Does that mean?

Oh, this is the we're taking drugs and hallucinating stuff part of the tests.

I've been waiting for this.

What feels like someone on LSD?

I see what's happening.

No, I don't see what's happening.

Oh, I'm terrible at this.

Motherfuck.

If somebody who thrives on positive validation, that was existentially disturbing.

You were at the third percentile.

Struggle the little bit.

Third percentile.

Struggle the little bit.

Third.

We scored you compared to NFL players.

So this is not scored to the general population, right?

So your worst area of performance is what we call instinctive learning.

Okay.

And that is your ability to pick up on probabilities, Right.

So if somebody lined up in a formation and they did the same thing every time they lined up in that formation, life would be easy.

Right.

But let's say they only run a certain play 70% of the time out of that formation and 30% of the time it's a different play.

Over time, we can pick that up.

So guys like Drew Brees was the best that we've ever tested, honestly, over the 40,000 athletes at this skill.

How about the other, what else?

Okay, please.

Decision complexity.

Yeah.

68th percentile.

So very good at executing the rules.

Once you know the rules, so once you know I need to go opposite or I need to go same, you're able to execute that rules.

That contracts with my

particular childhood complex psychologically, but yeah.

Impulse control, 76th percentile.

Hell yeah.

Yep.

Distraction control, 71st percentile.

All right.

And your ability to improvise, 74th percentile.

Now, those are encouraging numbers.

I should point out that in my household, a 74 is an F, but relative to the scale of

NFL players.

It's almost at the elite level.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we actually have a secondary measure.

So this is just how you're wired as a human being

when you're forced to make a decision within less than half a second.

So four of our tasks, you are forced to respond in less than half a second.

Are you wired for speed?

Are you wired for accuracy?

I want you to go ahead and guess, Pablo, because you did have a failure in one of those and we were forced to redo the purpose.

I was forced to redo the practice test.

Because why?

Because I was taking too long.

And so I'm going to say, again, true to my personal psychological insecurities, that

I'm an accuracy man.

You are way wired for accuracy over speed.

As a journalist, as a fact checker,

I believe that this is a virtue.

So could you give me, this is where like the guy who took the LSAT

and then almost became a lawyer and guy who studied his ass off for the SAT wants to know, give me, give me the scores.

So I can, if you can give me just per

category, what my

what my results are.

So your overall score was at the 40th percentile, which is average.

Okay, very.

And we can't forget that aspect.

Yeah.

So average is between the 40th and 60th percentile.

We're not a typical IQ test, so we don't have a bell-shaped distribution.

It's an even distribution here.

So

the same amount of people score a two as a 98, right?

And as a 50.

You were in the average range.

So if you ever heard, and this is, again, just the one overall score, so-and-so scored a 50.

That is dead average for an NFL player.

Yep.

So yeah, that's your S2 profile.

So I'm going to go home unilaterally and just tell everybody that I outscored CJ Stroud on the most prominent cognitive processing intelligence tests in professional sports.

And

to that,

you say what?

I would say that's a very dangerous thinking process to get yourself into because

to be CJ Stroud, you're going to need a whole lot more than an S2 score, right?

You're going to need a little bit of height, a little bit of size, some arm talent.

10 and three quarters.

Yeah.

So that's not bad.

I did notice you had some pretty thick soles on.

Okay.

A lug sole is a fashion choice.

It is a fashion choice.

Brandon.

Yeah, no, I like the fashion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Very fashionable.

Touche.

Touche.

Very saying there's a chance.

I'm saying, Pablo,

if flag football is in the 2028 Olympics, you might be a guy I'm giving a call here

relatively soon.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If anybody needs a non-instinctual moron,

I am apparently eminently qualified.

So I'm sitting here at my keyboard now, having found out that TJ Stroud and I are not so different.

No,

not because we both got blown out by Bryce Young on the S2 test, but because I personally

bombed the LSAT

in real life the first time I took it.

Because I, of course, wanted to go to law school.

But instead, what happened because of that test is that I wound up pursuing my very first job in sports media at Sports Illustrated.

Which

changed my whole entire life.

Which is all to say,

standardize tests sometimes.

Because sometimes, the test you fail

winds up becoming one of the greatest things that ever happened to you,

whether you consider yourself a test taker

or not.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.