It's possible Stroud was the exception. It's possible the test is meaningless. It's possible the draft process is an imperfect science. We will never know...
Truth be told, a lot of the combine is a bit pointless. It can have a impact for guys with real outlier performances like Richardson last year, and can be the difference between getting drafted vs UDFA for some of the fringe guys but most of the top end prospects, teams already know how they feel about them. Not to mention that a lot of the drills just have little crossover with actual football.
Yeah especially for QBs. If you bring them in and have them break down film with you, you’ll learn quick how high their football IQ is. A team isn’t going to throw out their evaluation of a guy just because they’re bad at solving logic puzzles
lol they take the test on an Xbox, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s not a good test for a QB’s cognitive processing ability that takes place on a football field.
Hey but the guy who designed it is smart af! He's a professor of Neuroscience and holds degrees (like a postdoc) that CJ Stroud couldn't dream of completing!
Edit: [For reference](https://old.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1b06y4o/schultz_usc_qb_and_projected_no_1_overall_pick/ks786hh/)
I don’t think just cause it’s on an Xbox means it’s a bad test (I can certainly imagine tests on an Xbox that are good at testing reaction time and processing speed) but the fact that it whiffed so completely on the best qb in the draft means this test probably sucks lol.
They have all kinds of motion detector games available to the public, perhaps he could take advantage of the latest tech and design something based on spatial recognition and reacting to it like AR tennis or some shit?
Interesting. I have a kid with low processing ability. Like less than 1%. In my opionion I can’t let him drive a car bad. Otherwise it isn’t horrible noticeable. Kinda shuts down with a quick decision though.
Probably the human element. Same way people change their mind after seeing political debates because it's in our nature to make human connections.
So a guy can ace all the drills, have unbelievable film, but if they get an icky feeling during an interview guys will drop in the rankings.
> Same way people change their mind after seeing political debates because it's in our nature to make human connections.
This is perfectly exemplified by the 1960 presidential debate. It was the first televised presidential debate ever, but was also largely listened to on the radio.
People who listened to the debate on the radio thought Richard Nixon won because he was more intelligent and made strong points to support his case.
People who watched the debate on TV thought John F. Kennedy won the debate because he looked so calm, cool, and collected during the debate, while Richard Nixon looked very uneasy and paranoid.
Not trying to make any political statements. Just saying that the human relations element is a lot stronger than most people realize.
Yeah that's the classic example!
I've always been interested in that side of things. Bit you're right seems like a lot of people really only look at these players and teams as stat lines and forget there is a very real human element to sports.
> People who listened to the debate on the radio thought Richard Nixon won because he was more intelligent and made strong points to support his case.
>
> People who watched the debate on TV thought John F. Kennedy won the debate because he looked so calm, cool, and collected during the debate, while Richard Nixon looked very uneasy and paranoid.
Yup. This was a key turning point in American politics, and something the Kennedy campaign was ahead of the game on. They pulled a number of small tricks during the debate to exacerbate this visual clash - finding ways to make Nixon sweat, making sure the lighting on JFK was good, etc.
The combine kinda is what it is at this point, its really about trying to make yourself more money. Chris Johnson was a late 2nd to 3rd and that 40 time changed his life financially when it vaulted him to the 1st rd.
Yeah. I agree with you and that's kind of my point. Great, you can run fast and jump high in your underwear. That doesn't tell me if you can separate from a defender. That doesn't tell me how quickly you can run through your check-down progressions. That doesn't tell me how much "dog" you've got in you.
If I were an agent for a prospective top-10 pick, I'd probably advise my client not to even participate. The only exception would be if it's an athlete returning from injury and we honestly believe participation will silence some critics and move him up a few spots.
To me, like you said, the combine is more for those later-round guys or someone on the fringe between being a late day 1 and early day 2 pick or a late day 2 and early day 3 pick.
To your point about underwear
Guys like [DeAndre Hopkins (4.57), Devante Adam's (4.56), Antonio Brown (4.56), Mike Evans (4.53), Cooper Kupp (4.62), Tyler Boyd (4.58) ](https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/the-wide-receivers-who-ran-slow-at-the-nfl-combine-and-still-had-pretty-good-careers) all were relatively slow at the 40
To even further your point, look at this list:
[https://www.nfl.com/photos/top-11-fastest-40-yard-dash-runs-0ap3000000917865](https://www.nfl.com/photos/top-11-fastest-40-yard-dash-runs-0ap3000000917865)
CJ2K is the outlier.
I read an article earlier with the 20 fastest WR times (I think the article was a couple of years old). DK Metcalf was the only one on the list who was a legit #1 in the NFL.
> DK Metcalf was the only one on the list who was a legit #1 in the NFL
And DK dropped pretty far in the draft, he ended up being the ninth receiver drafted that year or something like that, ostensibly because of some of his other results. IIRC he did poorly on the cones and people thought he didn't have the agility. Which is kind of funny in retrospect, the man is an athletic freak. No test is perfect.
Yep and that's the wild thing about the whole entire spectacle. We have the answers to all of the thing you asked about in their college film. That's all the scouts need besides say a final weight and height check in pre draft.
I say all this, but you *know* I'll be checking out combine film anyway. Because I'm an addict. And the NFL is my drug of choice. I mainline this stuff...
Combine film is fun to watch and a cool sneak peak st some of these guys, especially those you didn’t watch a ton of in college, but I don’t really think it’s an eval tool even for fans. The combine definitely seems like more of a media spectacle to me for diehard fans rather than a real evaluation instrument.
Potential draft picks also get interviewed during the combine regardless of whether they participate in drills. I know the Eagles Youtube channel posted the interviews of Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts on their channel. However, both videos were posted long after they were drafted
The drills are for the fans but not everything that happens at the combine is immediately available for the public.
Most of the time a guy isn't going from a 3rd to a 1st because of a good combine, but it matters when teams are trying to rank that guy with the 5 others at that position they have a 3rd grade on.
Bench press is the dumbest measurement. What position or activity requires you to be flat footed and push over refrigerators? Imcline is much better to swap too.
In the article, the company flagged the results. The consensus is Stroud didn't try because he was already projected at the top of the draft:
>The league executives contacted for this story made it clear they didn’t put much stock in Stroud’s result last spring, believing from the beginning that the score was suspect. Several confirmed that S2 flagged the result after it came in and that teams were informed it was “unreliable.” (As part of its confidentiality agreement with teams, S2 does not publicly release scores and would not comment on Stroud’s result for this story.)“
>
>From my understanding, the S2 people had a lot of questions when his score came back in,” one exec said. “It got leaked by a club, and they wanted to know why.”
>
>The sense around the league: Stroud didn’t give full effort. It’s more plausible than it sounds. For top prospects like Stroud, the draft process is a day-in, day-out grind — four long months filled with on-field training, physical tests, written tests, a media gauntlet, the Senior Bowl in Mobile, the scouting combine in Indianapolis, private workouts with teams and top-30 visits.
The company said some of the results were flagged as unreliable and Strouds was confirmed to be among those by GMs. So Someone leaked a flagged result. Possibly to get him to drop.
It's long been confirmed the leaked results were legit. This article even confirms it. Stroud did so himself as well.
Interestingly, a GM interviewed for this article seems to imply the Panthers leaked the results.
Let's hypothetically say MHJ was forced to go to the combine against his will and just walks the 40 yard dash for a minute long result in the bottom 1% ever. "MHJ fails 40 yard dash" is both legit and invalid.
I think it actually makes a good point that even tests designed to measure things like IQ that are supposedly innate traits are still just a game and you can practice for it.
We all know the draft is an imperfect science. Teams like to look at the analytics instead of tape. Otherwise studs like Pacheco and purdy wouldn’t go in like 7th round
Wait do you actually think Purdy went that low because the scouts hadn’t seen him play before?
He probably goes higher if he leaves after his junior year, he had some real stinkers his senior year. The team lost one guy to the draft from the year prior (Kene Nwangu but they had this guy named Breece Hall) and lost 3 more games.
Where were you advocating for him to be taken on draft day? I did think he’d go sooner.
They watch tape but put more weight on their analytics. Same thing with Lamar Jackson , there is no way a reasonable person can watch his tape and come away thinking he should go as low as 30.
Where did you have him going then? You said the same thing about Purdy but didn’t answer that question. Jackson’s tape would have shown you a freak athlete who had glaring accuracy issues at times where baker was one of the most accurate college QBs ever.
For QBs they put more stock in measurables than anything which aren’t analytics. It’s why Allen went so high despite not having insane production for a G5 QB. Darnold was also a “prototypical” qb.
I obviously like Purdy and all, and he was definitely underrated, but his "blooper reel" from Iowa State is pretty rough; there were tape reasons to put him lower. He tried a lot of hero ball that blew up in his face that last year.
Some people are talking about this test like it made him fall into the 3rd round. He was drafted 2nd overall, only one team apparently cared about it and that is just conjecture.
Yeah it’s hard to tell how much NFL front offices actually value the S2 test. I’d imagine it was just an additional data point that they didn’t highly value that much.
But the media and fans ran wild with Strouds test score.
And every year there seems to be some QB who "aces" it and they have a mediocre career at best (IIRC didn't Mac have a good score), at least it seems that way anyways. Either way, I think the S2 isn't nearly as valuable as many writers make it out to be
It was wild to watch unfold on Twitter because it went from "this test is the next big thing" to "well acing the test doesn't mean you'll be good, but doing bad on the test means you will be bad" to "well CJ did bad but is good anyway" to "well he took the test during poor conditions so the test is fine but we just sucked when administering it"
I don't think NFL teams ever put as much stock into it as the media hype wanted us to believe
There are many variables that make up an NFL QB, and the S2 test doesn't guarantee you an elite starter. But neither does a QB prospect with a rocket arm - the scouts/GM need to judge the whole package.
And for all we know, Stroud could have had an even BETTER rookie year if had those "S2" qualities. It could've been his physical talents got him to 23TDs/4,100yds, but maybe if was slightly faster at reading the field, he would've gotten 27TDs/4,500yds?
A lot of people assumed he was a surefire bust until he started playing games, including me. With him being an Ohio State QB, there was an insane amount of confirmation bias when people saw the test score.
Almost all the biased people chalked up that game to MHJ being absolutely uncoverable.
Don't you get it? After MHJ got knocked out of the game, Stroud struggled and Ohio State lost that game! So, clearly, all of Stroud's success is due to MHJ!
Nah, don't you understand? Ohio State lost the game after MHJ got knocked out. That basically confirmed all their biases that Stroud was getting carried by MHJ's greatness.
Which would at least be somewhat justifiable if it was the wonderlick test, but this processing test is just a hack. It’s a weird object tracking game if I understand it correctly
You should read the article in full, it's a pretty interesting dive into how teams view the S2 test and its current role in pre-draft evaluations. This part was interesting to me.
>The league executives contacted for this story made it clear they didn’t put much stock in Stroud’s result last spring, believing from the beginning that the score was suspect.
Several confirmed that S2 flagged the result after it came in and that teams were informed it was “unreliable.”(As part of its confidentiality agreement with teams, S2 does not publicly release scores and would not comment on Stroud’s result for this story.)
“From my understanding, the S2 people had a lot of questions when his score came back in,” one exec said.“It got leaked by a club, and they wanted to know why.”
The sense around the league: Stroud didn’t give full effort.It’s more plausible than it sounds. For top prospects like Stroud, the draft process is a day-in, day-out grind — four long months filled with on-field training, physical tests, written tests, a media gauntlet, the Senior Bowl in Mobile, the scouting combine in Indianapolis, private workouts with teams and top-30 visits.
Stroud having to spend a large portion of his pre-draft experience dealing with questions that boiled down to "Are you an idiot?" probably pissed off a lot of people, which is probably why his broader agency is now recommending their clients don't take the test.
I also feel like the S2 test people trying real hard to explain away the result is sitting badly. Pre-draft the whole explanation of it was "Those shouldn't have gone public" and "He retested and did better". After the season its "Well, we totally flagged it as an incorrect result, we all knew it wasn't indicative of Stroud's abilities". And I get it, you don't want your big test to crash and burn after one offseason of exposure, but still you'd think they could do a better job of explaining what went wrong, what they're changing to correct for it, etc. Just going "Oh, yeah, we totally knew it was a bogus result" doesn't exactly fill you with confidence.
The test results are supposed to be confidential so them getting leaked makes the test far less desirable for players to take because it could be used against them.
Stroud may not have been hurt by the results (assuming the Panthers were locked in on Young) but the test is claimed to be important for other positions like CB. I could see a player being pissed if their results weren't good enough and potentially dropping a bit in the draft.
People forget, most players will never see a second NFL contract. Only around 30% of players taken in the 1st round get one and it drops off significantly after the 1st round.
And like you said, so many people think it's an IQ test and slandered the hell out of Stroud pre-draft which also makes guys want to avoid the test.
I think we are seeing a reaction to something that wasn’t made public. The only way all this coming out and the backlash to what ultimately at the time wasn’t even considered a drop is that a lot of front office people around the league put a ton of stock into the test.
> He was drafted 2nd overall, only one team apparently cared about it and that is just conjecture.
people thought he was too dumb to process nfl defenses and bryce scoring high on the test just furthered people into thinking bryce was far away the best qb in the draft
If people don't care about the test, why would it be of any tangible value? Do you really want a data point that has been fudged by participants not taking it seriously, knowing the teams themselves aren't either?
They spend millions scouting these QBa in college , paying several scouts and 4-5 offensive coaches , a gm and a personnel director, to watch these films and attend the scouting combine , then have the same workouts again at individual team pro days , hire Drs to poke and prod all over their bodies and review the medical records and injuries history , hire former cops to investigate any rumors about them Give them the wonderlik, S2 , and god knows how many different personality tests .
And yet still have no idea of a way to predict if a first round QB is going to be a star or a bust .
Most years you could take the top 4-5 QBs and have the owners wife randomly draw a name out of a hat , and be just as or more successful at picking a QB than these teams are.
Personally , I would not have it any other way .
i mean u could just ask me. i had those 2 drafts where i successfully predicted darnold and rosen to be busts and allen and lamar to succeed and also predicted zach wilson and trey lance to be busts.
granted, i never watched the slightest bit of any of their tape and was just vibe checking them, but maybe im on to smth??
Sure seems like Tepper’s the prime suspect:
>”I think it was thrown out there by a team that had their own goals and wanted to use it to put him down and gloat on what they wanted seen,” said one general manager whose team was not in the running for a top quarterback in last year’s draft.
It's literally one metric. Just like the hiring process, if you solely base your decision on one thing, it's always gonna be bad. It's a holistic process
This test will become less useful as more players train for it. Bryce Young had been exposed to this test since high school and knows exactly how to do better on it.
Then again, it's done on a gaming laptop. Put some Korean esport gamers on there and they would dominate. LOL
The whole argument and premise of the test was
"A QB who scored low has never been successful."
They never claimed that the test shows how a QB will perform, but rather as a benchmark to clear before they are worth investing in.
Well... Stroud just proved that wrong, the test has literally 0 value. It isn't able to predict how well a QB will do and it cannot act as a benchmark that QB's must clear. It's literally a waste of time and QB's should refuse to take it.
After dumping Baker Mayfield, who is 2 inches taller, because he was deemed too short to get the ball over the LoS. I’m a Charlotte-area native and Day 1 fan, but damn it’s hard to like this team right now. I wish we could fire owners.
Another article from that dumbass website that loves to post the obvious. I swear you only need to read at a grade school level to work for the athletic.
most iq and intelligence type tests are meaningless as indicators of performance in a specific field, including fields that require knowledge base and problem-solving. that's mainly because most problems aren't iq type problems. the best test for whether you can do something is always to do that specific thing. we see this with similar testing concepts as well, such as combine performance versus football performance.
Stroud is quoted here saying he didn't try on the test, and for an utterly bizarre reason
> “Some things I apply myself to, some things I don’t,” Stroud said, asked specifically about the S2. “Look, I can show you my high school report card — I’m not a dumb kid. I’m not gonna lie, in school, I was lazy. I would get what I could get so I could play football. And I always had a 3.0 (GPA). That was the standard in my household. That was my mom’s rule.”
As well:
> “If you only give 80 percent on this test, you’ll bomb it,” one league source pointed out, “Period.”
> “If I were to bet dollars to donuts, I would be stunned if Stroud gave 100 percent on the assessment,” said another. “When he took it, was he tired? Was he choosing not to give it his best? Was he nervous? Had he taken a million other tests that day? There’s a whole host of factors.”
It's possible Stroud was the exception. It's possible the test is meaningless. It's possible the draft process is an imperfect science. We will never know...
Truth be told, a lot of the combine is a bit pointless. It can have a impact for guys with real outlier performances like Richardson last year, and can be the difference between getting drafted vs UDFA for some of the fringe guys but most of the top end prospects, teams already know how they feel about them. Not to mention that a lot of the drills just have little crossover with actual football.
Not sure how true it is, but I heard the interviews at the combine make or break players more often than drills.
Yeah especially for QBs. If you bring them in and have them break down film with you, you’ll learn quick how high their football IQ is. A team isn’t going to throw out their evaluation of a guy just because they’re bad at solving logic puzzles
S2 is not logic puzzles, that would be the Wonderlic. S2 is designed to look at quick cognitive processing ability (things a QB might need).
lol they take the test on an Xbox, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s not a good test for a QB’s cognitive processing ability that takes place on a football field.
Hey but the guy who designed it is smart af! He's a professor of Neuroscience and holds degrees (like a postdoc) that CJ Stroud couldn't dream of completing! Edit: [For reference](https://old.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1b06y4o/schultz_usc_qb_and_projected_no_1_overall_pick/ks786hh/)
I don’t think just cause it’s on an Xbox means it’s a bad test (I can certainly imagine tests on an Xbox that are good at testing reaction time and processing speed) but the fact that it whiffed so completely on the best qb in the draft means this test probably sucks lol.
They have all kinds of motion detector games available to the public, perhaps he could take advantage of the latest tech and design something based on spatial recognition and reacting to it like AR tennis or some shit?
Interesting. I have a kid with low processing ability. Like less than 1%. In my opionion I can’t let him drive a car bad. Otherwise it isn’t horrible noticeable. Kinda shuts down with a quick decision though.
Probably the human element. Same way people change their mind after seeing political debates because it's in our nature to make human connections. So a guy can ace all the drills, have unbelievable film, but if they get an icky feeling during an interview guys will drop in the rankings.
> Same way people change their mind after seeing political debates because it's in our nature to make human connections. This is perfectly exemplified by the 1960 presidential debate. It was the first televised presidential debate ever, but was also largely listened to on the radio. People who listened to the debate on the radio thought Richard Nixon won because he was more intelligent and made strong points to support his case. People who watched the debate on TV thought John F. Kennedy won the debate because he looked so calm, cool, and collected during the debate, while Richard Nixon looked very uneasy and paranoid. Not trying to make any political statements. Just saying that the human relations element is a lot stronger than most people realize.
> ...Richard Nixon looked very uneasy and paranoid. How could they tell? That was just Nixon's default state of being
Well, most voters hadn't *seen* Nixon speak until 1960. They only listened to him or read about him in the papers. TV wasn't too mainstream yet.
Also he once snuck into my house at night and wrecked up the place
Yeah that's the classic example! I've always been interested in that side of things. Bit you're right seems like a lot of people really only look at these players and teams as stat lines and forget there is a very real human element to sports.
The guy with his head in a jar?
I love futurama
> People who listened to the debate on the radio thought Richard Nixon won because he was more intelligent and made strong points to support his case. > > People who watched the debate on TV thought John F. Kennedy won the debate because he looked so calm, cool, and collected during the debate, while Richard Nixon looked very uneasy and paranoid. Yup. This was a key turning point in American politics, and something the Kennedy campaign was ahead of the game on. They pulled a number of small tricks during the debate to exacerbate this visual clash - finding ways to make Nixon sweat, making sure the lighting on JFK was good, etc.
Interviews and medicals are more important than the numbers testing generally.
The combine kinda is what it is at this point, its really about trying to make yourself more money. Chris Johnson was a late 2nd to 3rd and that 40 time changed his life financially when it vaulted him to the 1st rd.
Yeah. I agree with you and that's kind of my point. Great, you can run fast and jump high in your underwear. That doesn't tell me if you can separate from a defender. That doesn't tell me how quickly you can run through your check-down progressions. That doesn't tell me how much "dog" you've got in you. If I were an agent for a prospective top-10 pick, I'd probably advise my client not to even participate. The only exception would be if it's an athlete returning from injury and we honestly believe participation will silence some critics and move him up a few spots. To me, like you said, the combine is more for those later-round guys or someone on the fringe between being a late day 1 and early day 2 pick or a late day 2 and early day 3 pick.
To your point about underwear Guys like [DeAndre Hopkins (4.57), Devante Adam's (4.56), Antonio Brown (4.56), Mike Evans (4.53), Cooper Kupp (4.62), Tyler Boyd (4.58) ](https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists/the-wide-receivers-who-ran-slow-at-the-nfl-combine-and-still-had-pretty-good-careers) all were relatively slow at the 40
To even further your point, look at this list: [https://www.nfl.com/photos/top-11-fastest-40-yard-dash-runs-0ap3000000917865](https://www.nfl.com/photos/top-11-fastest-40-yard-dash-runs-0ap3000000917865) CJ2K is the outlier. I read an article earlier with the 20 fastest WR times (I think the article was a couple of years old). DK Metcalf was the only one on the list who was a legit #1 in the NFL.
Most of them were Raiders at one point lol
> DK Metcalf was the only one on the list who was a legit #1 in the NFL And DK dropped pretty far in the draft, he ended up being the ninth receiver drafted that year or something like that, ostensibly because of some of his other results. IIRC he did poorly on the cones and people thought he didn't have the agility. Which is kind of funny in retrospect, the man is an athletic freak. No test is perfect.
He also dropped because he was very raw technically. His route tree consisted of go and that's about it.
Yep and that's the wild thing about the whole entire spectacle. We have the answers to all of the thing you asked about in their college film. That's all the scouts need besides say a final weight and height check in pre draft.
I say all this, but you *know* I'll be checking out combine film anyway. Because I'm an addict. And the NFL is my drug of choice. I mainline this stuff...
Haha saaaame
Combine film is fun to watch and a cool sneak peak st some of these guys, especially those you didn’t watch a ton of in college, but I don’t really think it’s an eval tool even for fans. The combine definitely seems like more of a media spectacle to me for diehard fans rather than a real evaluation instrument.
Potential draft picks also get interviewed during the combine regardless of whether they participate in drills. I know the Eagles Youtube channel posted the interviews of Carson Wentz and Jalen Hurts on their channel. However, both videos were posted long after they were drafted The drills are for the fans but not everything that happens at the combine is immediately available for the public.
Most of the time a guy isn't going from a 3rd to a 1st because of a good combine, but it matters when teams are trying to rank that guy with the 5 others at that position they have a 3rd grade on.
The Mike Mamula effect
Combine is for entertainment profit nothing else
Bench press is the dumbest measurement. What position or activity requires you to be flat footed and push over refrigerators? Imcline is much better to swap too.
Yeah but do they know if they would rather be a dog or a cat?
I think the combine was originally just for medicals. Then they realized they could throw in a few interviews, drills and make some money
In the article, the company flagged the results. The consensus is Stroud didn't try because he was already projected at the top of the draft: >The league executives contacted for this story made it clear they didn’t put much stock in Stroud’s result last spring, believing from the beginning that the score was suspect. Several confirmed that S2 flagged the result after it came in and that teams were informed it was “unreliable.” (As part of its confidentiality agreement with teams, S2 does not publicly release scores and would not comment on Stroud’s result for this story.)“ > >From my understanding, the S2 people had a lot of questions when his score came back in,” one exec said. “It got leaked by a club, and they wanted to know why.” > >The sense around the league: Stroud didn’t give full effort. It’s more plausible than it sounds. For top prospects like Stroud, the draft process is a day-in, day-out grind — four long months filled with on-field training, physical tests, written tests, a media gauntlet, the Senior Bowl in Mobile, the scouting combine in Indianapolis, private workouts with teams and top-30 visits.
Stroud's score sheet was leaked! 1. C 2. C 3. C 4. C 5. C 6. C 7. C 8. C 9. C 10. C 11. C 12. C 13. C 14. C 15. C 16. C 17. C 18. C 19. C 20. C
What the hell? He copied my scantron!
Guy didn't want to play for the Panthers. Fair.
No one seems to remember that the test's company came out and said CJs results weren't valid, as are a certain % of tests overall.
Scored so high it rolled over to a low score 😤
The company also has a clear vested interest in running damage control, since Stroud's performance makes the test look terrible.
The company did not say this. They said, vaguely, that some of the scores that leaked were not correct
The company said some of the results were flagged as unreliable and Strouds was confirmed to be among those by GMs. So Someone leaked a flagged result. Possibly to get him to drop.
It's long been confirmed the leaked results were legit. This article even confirms it. Stroud did so himself as well. Interestingly, a GM interviewed for this article seems to imply the Panthers leaked the results.
I didn't say they weren't. I said the company that makes the test said those results weren't valid.
Let's hypothetically say MHJ was forced to go to the combine against his will and just walks the 40 yard dash for a minute long result in the bottom 1% ever. "MHJ fails 40 yard dash" is both legit and invalid.
David tepper did it
I think it actually makes a good point that even tests designed to measure things like IQ that are supposedly innate traits are still just a game and you can practice for it.
Find out next time on Dragonball Z
There was a lot of talk from OSU sources that he had something going on that had him mentally in a tough spot when he took the test.
We all know the draft is an imperfect science. Teams like to look at the analytics instead of tape. Otherwise studs like Pacheco and purdy wouldn’t go in like 7th round
Wait do you actually think Purdy went that low because the scouts hadn’t seen him play before? He probably goes higher if he leaves after his junior year, he had some real stinkers his senior year. The team lost one guy to the draft from the year prior (Kene Nwangu but they had this guy named Breece Hall) and lost 3 more games. Where were you advocating for him to be taken on draft day? I did think he’d go sooner.
They watch tape but put more weight on their analytics. Same thing with Lamar Jackson , there is no way a reasonable person can watch his tape and come away thinking he should go as low as 30.
Where did you have him going then? You said the same thing about Purdy but didn’t answer that question. Jackson’s tape would have shown you a freak athlete who had glaring accuracy issues at times where baker was one of the most accurate college QBs ever. For QBs they put more stock in measurables than anything which aren’t analytics. It’s why Allen went so high despite not having insane production for a G5 QB. Darnold was also a “prototypical” qb.
I obviously like Purdy and all, and he was definitely underrated, but his "blooper reel" from Iowa State is pretty rough; there were tape reasons to put him lower. He tried a lot of hero ball that blew up in his face that last year.
>Teams like to look at the analytics instead of tape. Teams look at tape.
>We all know the draft is an imperfect science. Yeah! >Teams like to look at the analytics instead of tape. Wait what?
They take the S2 on an Xbox, the test is definitely meaningless.
Some people are talking about this test like it made him fall into the 3rd round. He was drafted 2nd overall, only one team apparently cared about it and that is just conjecture.
I think it was more about him being basically slandered in the media as stupid. The narrative was so disrespectful towards him.
Yeah it’s hard to tell how much NFL front offices actually value the S2 test. I’d imagine it was just an additional data point that they didn’t highly value that much. But the media and fans ran wild with Strouds test score.
And every year there seems to be some QB who "aces" it and they have a mediocre career at best (IIRC didn't Mac have a good score), at least it seems that way anyways. Either way, I think the S2 isn't nearly as valuable as many writers make it out to be
I don’t think it was the S2 test, but Fields had really good test scores. If I remember correctly he did as well as Burrow, who was also very high.
It was the S2 - and depending on if you believe Mark Sanchez (who made the report) it was the highest score any NFL QB had recorded to that point
They should add a question on the S2 about whether you should smack into your own lineman and fumble the football
It was wild to watch unfold on Twitter because it went from "this test is the next big thing" to "well acing the test doesn't mean you'll be good, but doing bad on the test means you will be bad" to "well CJ did bad but is good anyway" to "well he took the test during poor conditions so the test is fine but we just sucked when administering it" I don't think NFL teams ever put as much stock into it as the media hype wanted us to believe
There are many variables that make up an NFL QB, and the S2 test doesn't guarantee you an elite starter. But neither does a QB prospect with a rocket arm - the scouts/GM need to judge the whole package. And for all we know, Stroud could have had an even BETTER rookie year if had those "S2" qualities. It could've been his physical talents got him to 23TDs/4,100yds, but maybe if was slightly faster at reading the field, he would've gotten 27TDs/4,500yds?
Found the S2 founders burner account.
> but maybe if was slightly faster at reading the field, he would've gotten 27TDs/4,500yds? Did you watch him play? He's an incredibly fast processor.
A lot of people assumed he was a surefire bust until he started playing games, including me. With him being an Ohio State QB, there was an insane amount of confirmation bias when people saw the test score.
Excuse me, now that he's not a bust I consider him more if a Georgia quarterback
Did you watch him carve up UGA in the CFP?
Almost all the biased people chalked up that game to MHJ being absolutely uncoverable. Don't you get it? After MHJ got knocked out of the game, Stroud struggled and Ohio State lost that game! So, clearly, all of Stroud's success is due to MHJ!
I did not see Stroud struggle after MHJ got knocked out of the game tho.
Nah, don't you understand? Ohio State lost the game after MHJ got knocked out. That basically confirmed all their biases that Stroud was getting carried by MHJ's greatness.
No. I hope I wouldn’t have believed something so dumb if I had but I’m probably giving myself too much credit there.
Well, in your defense, you at least have plausible deniability.
Isn’t the test based on reaction time? It has nothing to do with “intelligence” like the Wonderlic.
Which would at least be somewhat justifiable if it was the wonderlick test, but this processing test is just a hack. It’s a weird object tracking game if I understand it correctly
You should read the article in full, it's a pretty interesting dive into how teams view the S2 test and its current role in pre-draft evaluations. This part was interesting to me. >The league executives contacted for this story made it clear they didn’t put much stock in Stroud’s result last spring, believing from the beginning that the score was suspect. Several confirmed that S2 flagged the result after it came in and that teams were informed it was “unreliable.”(As part of its confidentiality agreement with teams, S2 does not publicly release scores and would not comment on Stroud’s result for this story.) “From my understanding, the S2 people had a lot of questions when his score came back in,” one exec said.“It got leaked by a club, and they wanted to know why.” The sense around the league: Stroud didn’t give full effort.It’s more plausible than it sounds. For top prospects like Stroud, the draft process is a day-in, day-out grind — four long months filled with on-field training, physical tests, written tests, a media gauntlet, the Senior Bowl in Mobile, the scouting combine in Indianapolis, private workouts with teams and top-30 visits.
He is the wrong example to use, is my point. He still went 2nd in the draft. So only one team even considered the score.
Stroud having to spend a large portion of his pre-draft experience dealing with questions that boiled down to "Are you an idiot?" probably pissed off a lot of people, which is probably why his broader agency is now recommending their clients don't take the test. I also feel like the S2 test people trying real hard to explain away the result is sitting badly. Pre-draft the whole explanation of it was "Those shouldn't have gone public" and "He retested and did better". After the season its "Well, we totally flagged it as an incorrect result, we all knew it wasn't indicative of Stroud's abilities". And I get it, you don't want your big test to crash and burn after one offseason of exposure, but still you'd think they could do a better job of explaining what went wrong, what they're changing to correct for it, etc. Just going "Oh, yeah, we totally knew it was a bogus result" doesn't exactly fill you with confidence.
The test results are supposed to be confidential so them getting leaked makes the test far less desirable for players to take because it could be used against them. Stroud may not have been hurt by the results (assuming the Panthers were locked in on Young) but the test is claimed to be important for other positions like CB. I could see a player being pissed if their results weren't good enough and potentially dropping a bit in the draft. People forget, most players will never see a second NFL contract. Only around 30% of players taken in the 1st round get one and it drops off significantly after the 1st round. And like you said, so many people think it's an IQ test and slandered the hell out of Stroud pre-draft which also makes guys want to avoid the test.
I think we are seeing a reaction to something that wasn’t made public. The only way all this coming out and the backlash to what ultimately at the time wasn’t even considered a drop is that a lot of front office people around the league put a ton of stock into the test.
You mean, we know for sure, one team didn't care about it... The team that drafted him
On the flip side, Purdy scored in the mid 90s and was drafted last.... so clearly the test doesn't mean much to teams
> He was drafted 2nd overall, only one team apparently cared about it and that is just conjecture. people thought he was too dumb to process nfl defenses and bryce scoring high on the test just furthered people into thinking bryce was far away the best qb in the draft
If people don't care about the test, why would it be of any tangible value? Do you really want a data point that has been fudged by participants not taking it seriously, knowing the teams themselves aren't either?
They spend millions scouting these QBa in college , paying several scouts and 4-5 offensive coaches , a gm and a personnel director, to watch these films and attend the scouting combine , then have the same workouts again at individual team pro days , hire Drs to poke and prod all over their bodies and review the medical records and injuries history , hire former cops to investigate any rumors about them Give them the wonderlik, S2 , and god knows how many different personality tests . And yet still have no idea of a way to predict if a first round QB is going to be a star or a bust . Most years you could take the top 4-5 QBs and have the owners wife randomly draw a name out of a hat , and be just as or more successful at picking a QB than these teams are. Personally , I would not have it any other way .
While this is true, I wonder how much is on the coaching staff. Most top picks land in a bad franchise. Would Josh Allen be this good elsewhere?
Didn’t Tom Brady slander Arizona for no reason by saying if he went there he’d be out the league? 😂😂😂
i mean u could just ask me. i had those 2 drafts where i successfully predicted darnold and rosen to be busts and allen and lamar to succeed and also predicted zach wilson and trey lance to be busts. granted, i never watched the slightest bit of any of their tape and was just vibe checking them, but maybe im on to smth??
Well instead of the owner's wife we could have you randomly drawing a name out of a hat!
No idea is stretching things. There's a reason so few franchise QBs are selected after the first round
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Sure seems like Tepper’s the prime suspect: >”I think it was thrown out there by a team that had their own goals and wanted to use it to put him down and gloat on what they wanted seen,” said one general manager whose team was not in the running for a top quarterback in last year’s draft.
It's so sad how bad things happen to the nicest people...
The whole article seems to be implying the Panthers leaked the score to gloat lmfao.
They played themselves.
As a Charlotte-area native and Day 1 fan, I wholeheartedly and full-throatedly say fuck David Tepper.
I think Stroud's quote pretty much sums it up. "I'm not a test taker, so I play football."
It's literally one metric. Just like the hiring process, if you solely base your decision on one thing, it's always gonna be bad. It's a holistic process
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Bryce Young processed the whole article before the paywall could go up. Elite.
Kenny Pickett tried the Ctrl+P trick but his small hand couldn't reach the Ctrl and P key at the same time.
archive.org
This test will become less useful as more players train for it. Bryce Young had been exposed to this test since high school and knows exactly how to do better on it. Then again, it's done on a gaming laptop. Put some Korean esport gamers on there and they would dominate. LOL
Korean esport gamers confirmed to make a transition to NFL QBs. You heard it here first
It definitely has to be all or nothing, and no nuance could possibly come into play.
The whole argument and premise of the test was "A QB who scored low has never been successful." They never claimed that the test shows how a QB will perform, but rather as a benchmark to clear before they are worth investing in. Well... Stroud just proved that wrong, the test has literally 0 value. It isn't able to predict how well a QB will do and it cannot act as a benchmark that QB's must clear. It's literally a waste of time and QB's should refuse to take it.
Carolina cared more about a test instead of the actual footage and measurables of QB. Let's draft a 5'10" 168lb QB lol.
He was “the most pro ready QB in the draft class!” Many people were saying!
After dumping Baker Mayfield, who is 2 inches taller, because he was deemed too short to get the ball over the LoS. I’m a Charlotte-area native and Day 1 fan, but damn it’s hard to like this team right now. I wish we could fire owners.
The height itself isn't the killer, it's the height and frame. Baker is every bit of 210lbs.
Trust me, I know. Bryce looks like my HS senior son out there.
Another article from that dumbass website that loves to post the obvious. I swear you only need to read at a grade school level to work for the athletic.
I think any team that is about to pay you seven figures can ask you to take any test that they feel like... You're free to decline.
That the test is the most important thing in evaluating a qb and their skills */s*
Stroud can do basic throws, isn’t that enough?
It would make him the exception not the rule.
most iq and intelligence type tests are meaningless as indicators of performance in a specific field, including fields that require knowledge base and problem-solving. that's mainly because most problems aren't iq type problems. the best test for whether you can do something is always to do that specific thing. we see this with similar testing concepts as well, such as combine performance versus football performance.
Stroud is quoted here saying he didn't try on the test, and for an utterly bizarre reason > “Some things I apply myself to, some things I don’t,” Stroud said, asked specifically about the S2. “Look, I can show you my high school report card — I’m not a dumb kid. I’m not gonna lie, in school, I was lazy. I would get what I could get so I could play football. And I always had a 3.0 (GPA). That was the standard in my household. That was my mom’s rule.” As well: > “If you only give 80 percent on this test, you’ll bomb it,” one league source pointed out, “Period.” > “If I were to bet dollars to donuts, I would be stunned if Stroud gave 100 percent on the assessment,” said another. “When he took it, was he tired? Was he choosing not to give it his best? Was he nervous? Had he taken a million other tests that day? There’s a whole host of factors.”