Pablo Torre Finds Out - Are You Smarter Than an NFL Quarterback?

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

A fierce debate — about no less than the meaning of intelligence itself — has broken out in the world of football scouting, as star quarterback C.J. Stroud puts together one of the best rookie QB seasons ever... after bombing the new Wonderlic test. But can this S2 Cognition exam actually predict how your brain impacts athletic performance? Pablo puts himself to the ultimate test of mental agility, with a little help from Alex Smith — and with a LOT of expletives.Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/inuwR73XKw0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 soul is a fashion choice. It is a fashion choice. Right after this ad. You're listening to Giraff King's Network.

So I'm playing hurt today. Yeah, I can tell. You sound like you should not be here. I... I... I... ...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 your throat... That I know of. 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. It's not that you're hungover. Is that your gas bag too much? Come on, dude. I'm just constantly. I'm like drinking my tea.

It's fucking. 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, seemed to be anybody who told them that Bryce Young was going to be awesome. Bryce Young, the number one overall pick, 23. Out of Alabama. He just did this against the bucks on Sunday.

Young will throw on fourth out. He's directing traffic for Thiel and Thielan. He can't get it. It's intercepted. Antoine Winfields. That makes the Panthers now 1 in 11, I believe. Correct. One and 11.

Bryce Young has been dog shit. 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 10 and young. Underneath it's picked off. And here. Here's Bryce Young.

It's got time here. And he throws it. It's intercepted. It's Theron Blamming. Again. Blam! Look at it. It's bad. That footage cut my heart.

Like, it really hurt me as a short king. Because I'm rooting for that fellow short king. And he's embarrassing us out of here. I'm just cough, cough laughing. Isn't that 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 Young, just beat the Broncos on Sunday to get the Texans into playoff position.

They're now seven and five. And he's been fucking awesome. Yeah. He's been looking like this. A ton of fun to watch. Stroud on first down. he was looking downfield he's going downfield toward the end zone down 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 trout to the end zone touchdown tank cj stroud leads a magical drive this young man is special. Yeah, the dude has set records for passing yards, two 12 games for a rookie quarterback. He was an 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 the 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 Wonderland test, the scores weren't great, shaking a preseason debut. Some said, but since then he has. impressed. He's been unbelievable. And if I was in charge of the Players Association, there is no way

any of my players would ever take a Wonderlich test again because it's completely unfair. And this kid has just been awesome. Across the body, beautiful placement. And this is what this kid has done. So, you know, the Wonderlich test, who gives a rip? It is rare that I agree with Mark Schlerth. Stink.

Manly Manoff, but I do agree with Schlerth here. Like, why are we testing these guys? in this manner. But Mark Schlereth was also crucially, incredibly wrong about the details in that call. Because the Wonderlich 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 pre-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 C.J. 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 SAT test. The S2 is the thing that's replaced the wonder lick, and it's the thing that has also raised the eyebrows of like our smart nerd friends. So 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 C.J. Shroud 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 quarterback 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 shit 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, absolutely. Are you going to take the test yourself? Now that you mention it. Come on, dude.

I've been, I've been waiting. I've been waiting. I've been waiting to take these tests. This is ridiculous. Are you doing a bit? Like, what is this?

I should probably take another test before I take those tests. You should take medicine. I'm going to take multiple tests. Alex, I, 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 like more often than not. Like nobody else talks about their alma mater. What do you mean? As much as people that went to Harvard, you know, and 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 40-nighters. 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.

I had seven offensive coordinators in six years in San Francisco, man. I mean, he literally had to learn by 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. That's so many more than I ever. It was a lot. 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 Wonderlich. The Wonderlich test tells NFL scouts how smart their prospects are. It goes way beyond football. The Wonderlich test is also frequently used by Fortune 500 companies

to help assess possible new hires. The Wonderlich test has been a staple of NFL player evaluation since the 1970s. The Wonderlich tested math, vocabulary, and logic and had visual puzzles. Folks out there could probably Google Wonderlich questions at this point they can get on. but it has nothing to do with football, Pablo. It's actually like this very logical-based test. 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 Alex Smith, for the record here, got one of the top 10 published quarterback scores on record. A 40 out of 50, 50 points scale. 50 questions, 12 minutes. Slacker.

Yeah, I know, I know. What the fuck do you get wrong? There's the difference right there. Harvard and Utah. Well, but hold on, though, because the wonder lick for people who don't know, how do you describe what it is, what it was? This was easy pickings, Pablo. And I even, the crazy part is you, you know, once you declare to come out pro and you get an agent,

like, I took three or four practice wonderlicks. And they graded with, you know, you'd get the results back, time. So, I mean, I walked into that really, really comfortable. You know, but certainly I thought about some of my peers, like, depend on your background and 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 wonder lick test,

a practice test today. Right before this, I got a 44. There we go. So. You would 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.

And they get progressively harder for everybody out there. They start really easy in the back half of it. 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 f*** 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 wonder look 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... Oh, like the... Glasses? Yeah. Oh, wow. Okay. Now I'm embarrassed. I don't know.

I'm guessing there. I'm 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... 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? It was just... It's like a stapled sheet of paper, like in the corner. And I'll never forget the three days. The whole world, like, descends, the football world, that is, descends on Indianapolis. And it's just, yeah, you honestly are, you want to talk about, like, cattle, like, poked and prodded and at the hospital a long time.

Because, 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 combine's physical. And it's an audience of scouts and GMs and coaches. Like, it's so creepy, dude. It's creepy. And you're up there. And they measure every single part of your body. That's right.

And call it out. Yep. And like, and announce it. I mean, it's uncomfortable. The wonder, like great in terms of results. Ryan 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 Rodriguez 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. Yeah. 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 a, 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, do you know I was 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 ten? Or are we in third down? Like, what's the situation of the game? Boom, I snapped the ball. I need it! My shot! 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, the right guard doesn't block his guy, and then all that shit's out the window. Alex Smith's stepping up in the pocket, trying to keep the play alive. Now 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, blush from the pocket. Uh-oh, those on the run. 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 stage to do it all. And that's probably even more important. The pressure. Performing under pressure.

Yeah. Like, do you have it there? Yeah. Yeah. And how do you measure that? I want to 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 ace 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 is a decision making how are you characterizing what the skill is if it's not intelligence as has been previously defined what are we 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 garry is just crushing the left tackle, playing 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've described a very unique job.

Like, I just think, like I think about Brock Purdy. Mr. Irrelevant, 22, with the 262nd pick in the 22 NFL draft, the San Francisco 49ers select Brock Purdy, a quarterback from Iowa State. Go, Niners! I mean, he was a four-year starter at Iowa State. How 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.

So to get to where the NFL is going now, they've tried a couple of replacements. S2 Cognition delivers the leading digital evaluation that is scientifically validated to measure these cognitive abilities. that have been unquantifiable. Until now, the S2EVAL 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 Wonderlich 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. Strout.

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 C.J. 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 out. absolutely astounding. And this is coming from a guy, Pablo, that take it, I've 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 got leaked.

Yeah, it's shh-de. 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've 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 break. 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 let's fucking find out how good I am. Oh, boy. Ah, f***. Ah, fuck. Motherf. All right. So what you need to know about the S2 test before we get to my test results here is that is absolutely nothing like the Wonderlich. 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 learned a single fact or formula or definitely. 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 got 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 Brandon Alley, yes. Hello. Hi. You're a neuroscientist. You're the man who just subjected me to whatever the fuck that was. And I apologize for cursing, although... It'll make you curse. 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 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. Yeah, we're trying to make you fail to find out what you do. Well, we were probably. 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.

Right. 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you started thinking about, you know, your Josh Allen, your Brock Purdy's, Patrick Mahomes, Drew Brees, Joe Burroughs, those guys scored really, really well here. Like we're talking like a plus. Yeah, above the 90th percentile. About the 90, 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 shi-on recently. Yeah. Yeah. So 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, reportedly, 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 numeracy thing, right? So when people were writing about us about Brock Purdy, who ace the test as well. Who ace 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 on for one test. Yeah, Twitter searching CJ Stroud S2. Yeah, it's not good for my mental health, right? I imagine. Impulse control hard to manage in that circumstance. See, J's a phenomenal quarterback, right?

He reads defense is very good. He's poised. He's super accurate, right? All of those things. 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. Yeah. We've seen all of these stories. I certainly personally feel like there was leaks that were intentionally happened for a specific narrative. Well, I should say that 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 wonder lick and so this is now freighted with great meaning and various front offices including by the way the Panthers front office and 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 in these players. And your response to just the tests that were leaked just because I want to get it 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.

We'll hear about it forever. And that's part of being in pro sports. Like, look, it's a tough business, right? And undoubtedly every 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 to 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 unpropritary sample and analysis, is that a quarterback's wonderlick 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 fluid friends, just as a matter of magnitude, when I explain this to them. Because what you should know here is simply that 30% is fucking enormous. If you think there's 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 management is using to help reduce uncertainty when you start thinking about okay how does he make decision so if it's a receiver that can run four two and we've had that

can we handicap that four two so if he's slow on the decision making maybe he plays like a four four or four five guy that's helpful not saying okay well he scored a low on the s two we're not going to take him but let me 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 your yeah cognitive wiring I am rooting for the guys who ace this test to be awesome, and I'm rooting for the guys who bombed 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 C.J. Stroud fan, and that's who I was trying to impress, or that's who I was trying to work for, I can see that. The teams that we work with across all of, 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 are 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 act like we said something. First off, we said nothing at all. With the leaks, yeah. Like we, I hope to God, C.J. tears it up.

We love that. As a matter of fact, that is what drives a scientist. Okay, right? The 98th's crushing it, no shit. 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 experienced 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 get 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 Pobletori finds out that C.J. 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 C.J. 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 C.J. Stroud is what he told assembled reporters back in April of this year. I'm not a test tape, so I play football. The people who are making the pigs know what I can do. So that's all that matters is neat.

There's a whole bunch of people who know how to coach better, you know 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 an arena to his host. So, and I'm standing on that. 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. Right. 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. Literal bullets fly. Yeah. Impulse control for a quarterback. You threw 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, We feel like his brain is capable of doing it.

Right. That's what we're doing. Right. We're not telling you, C.J. Stroud is going to go out and suck. C.J. Stroud is going to go out and throw for 500 yards and five touchdowns against the bucks. 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 C.J. 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 armed talent or decision-making or S-2 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 It's fucking 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 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 f*** your. yourself. Now, now let's talk about this in reality.

Yes, please, please. So I'll just go down by each one. Okay. 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 percent of it. Yeah, that was horrifying to me. Which, you know, these are also age-dependent. So your ability to search through visual chaos and locate a target. I saw one I meant to press it. The shit's moving fast, man. All right. Ah, fuck.

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, fuck. You're at the 41st percent of. 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 I've been highlighted. This is like watching three-card Monty. Man, I'm going to be terrible at this. Yep, way off. Very good. There's so many balls. 15th percentile.

That felt like I should be in a home somewhere. Like doing that test. Oh, yeah, don't let me out in public. It's not easy. No. Yep. Your instinctive learning. Oh, this is the, we're taking drugs and hallucinating stuff part of the test.

I've been waiting for this of what feels like someone on LSD. I see what's happening. No, I don't see what's happening. Oh, I'm terrible with this. Motherf-fucking. It's somebody who thrives on positive validation that was existentially disturbing. You were at the third percentile. Struggle.

Third? Third percentile. Struggled a little bit. Third. We scored you compared to NFL players. Thank you. This is not scored to the general population. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 Breeze was the best that we've ever tested, honestly, over the 40,000 athletes at this skill. How about the other? What else? Okay. Decision complexity. Yeah. 68th percent. 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 really quickly. Yeah, that tracks with my particular childhood complex psychologically. But yeah. Impulse control, 76 percent of. Hell yeah. Yep. Distraction control, 71st percent of all right. And your ability to improvise 74th percent of.

Now, those are encouraging numbers, I should point out, that in my household, the 74 is an F, but relative to the scale of NFL players. That is 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 were forced to respond less than half a second.

Right. 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 were forced to redo. I was forced to redo the practice test. Because why? Because I was taking too long. Yes.

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 twice and then almost became a lawyer and guy who studied his ass off for the SAT wants to know, give me the scores. So I can, if you can give me just per, per. category what my results are. So your overall score was at the 40th percentile, which is average. Okay. And we can't forget that aspect. 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. Yep. So yeah, that's your S2 profile. So I'm going to go home unilaterally and just tell everybody that I outscored C.J. 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 C.J. 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 armed talent. I have 10 and 3 quarters. Yeah, yeah, 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. Tushé. But you're saying there's a chance.

I'm saying, Pablo, if flag football is in the 2020 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 C.J. 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. It's illustrated, which changed my whole entire life, which is all to say, standardized tests sometimes. Because sometimes, the test you fail minds 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 metal arc media production.

and I'll talk to you next time.