Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Vince Young is Dumm...But He Sho izz Fast

Vince Young scored a 6 on the Wonderlic test. The Wonderlic test is given to every NFL draft prospect. It's 50 questions in 12 minutes. The timing does become a factor because you have less than 15 seconds to answer each question. But predraft prep should include practice tests and strategies, such as answer as many as you can, and don't get stuck on one question. Vince Young for some reason had either zero or poor advice in preparing for this test. He reportedly retook the test and scored a 16.
Average is 19. Only one player, an anonymous punter from Harvard ever scored 50. I took a practice test once and scored a 33.
In 1999, Donovan McNabb scored 12, Akili Smith scored 15 and Daunte Culpepper scored both a 15 and a 21. The year before, Charlie Batch had a 12 and a 15 and Aaron Brooks scored 17. You definitely don't want a quarterback dumber than Aaron Brooks. Ryan Leaf scored a 27. Brett Favre scored a 22.
There are some major questions about whether this is a predictor of success in the NFL. The answer is no. But quarterbacks have to make the correct decisions, under pressure, quickly. So I think people who say ignore it and focus only on results on the field is an idiot. Mike Vick stinks because he doesn't make the right decisions. He waits too long to throw passes and open receivers get covered. And he has a strong arm. Vince Young doesn't.
I would be very worried if I were an NFL team drafting Vince Young.

Here are three sample Wonderlic questions CNN was running with:
What is the ninth month?
If a pad costs 21 cents, how much do 4 pads cost?
If you can buy a foot of rope for ten cents, how many feet can you buy with 60 cents?

The questions do get progressively harder, but if you can't get at least 10 of those right there is definitely something wrong.

Here's a sample Wonderlic. I haven't taken it yet. Please post actual scores in the comments section,

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I got an 8 out of 9

Paul said...

got all 9

Mike said...

I got 9 out of 9

Anonymous said...

I took a practice test once and got 33.1

Anonymous said...

I got 1 out of 9

Ton said...

8 of 9. Neiman, Nieman got me.