Just Curious...Wonderlic scores

[Kiwon]

Now that the Packers are officially the youngest team in the league, I was curious where they rank on the Wonderlic index. Has that been published yet?

Last year's squad had the distinction of having the lowest scores in the NFL last year (19.1 out of 50). http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=360178

Surely with all the new faces and the rhetoric from TT and MM about smart players and the Zone Blocking System we would have improved in this area.

Just curious....

[BallHawk]

With the trade of Javon Walker we sky-rocketed into the top 10.

[MJZiggy]

I don't know, we went way up when Javon left and I think we may have dropped a bit when Samkon got on the plane out of town...

[BallHawk]

Yeah, but when K-Rob arrived we got back up there.

[BallHawk]

On a related note, who is the smartest player on the Packers? My guess would be a blocking man, maybe Spitz or Henderson?

[mmmdk]

New Packer Morency scored 11 on wonderlic score - not trying to bring him down. I welcome Morency but I'll miss Gado.

[falco]

Tauscher would be up there I bet; he's in graduate school in the offseason and I think was teaching classes in Europe for awhile??? I don't recall the specifics.

[ND72]

With the trade of Javon Walker we sky-rocketed into the top 10.

WOW, did that make me laugh.

[GBRulz]

On a related note, who is the smartest player on the Packers? My guess would be a blocking man, maybe Spitz or Henderson?

If I remember correctly, Aaron Rodgers had the highest score.

[Fosco33]

Here's a sample test. It's only 9 questions and supposedly easier than the original test - I got an 8/9 but not sure what that means...

http://www.angelfire.com/fl3/existence/wonderlic.html

[GBRulz]

I also got an 8. I'm still arguing about the last question about Bill and Beth. WHERE does it say that Bill greeted Ben?

[Guiness]

How much time did you give yourself?

A big part of the Wonderlic and similar tests is the time pressure. If the questions are relatively the same, you should've only had 130 seconds to answer the 9 questions!!!

edit: just looked at it - I see there's a timer. I think you're right - it's easier - I got 9.

[woodbuck27]

Average scores - Wonderlic

This assessment roughly corresponds to examples from Paul Zimmerman's The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football. According to Zimmerman, examples of average scores include for each position,

Scores from present and past NFL players include:

Troy Aikman - 29; Drew Bledsoe - 37; John Elway - 30; Brian Griese - 39;
Eli Manning - 39; Dan Marino - 16; Steve Young - 33

Offensive Tackle - 26

Center - 25

Quarterback - 24

Brett Favre scored a ** 22 ( He was partying the night before his test after spending the entire day chopping down trees and mowing the lawns of everyone he knew in Hattisburg,Mississippi. )

Guard - 23

Tight End - 22

Safety - 19

Linebacker - 19

Cornerback 18

Wide reciever - 17

Fullback - 17

Halfback - 16

While an average football player usually scores around 20 points,

The Wonderlic, Inc claims a score of at least 10 points suggests a person is literate [5].

Furthermore, when the test was given to miscellaneous people of various professions, it was observed that the average participant scored a 24.

Examples of scores from everyday professions included,

Chemist - 31

Programmer - 29

Newswriter - 26

Bank teller - 22

Security Guard - 17

[GrnBay007]

Wonder what President B would score?

[woodbuck27]

Taking your Wonderlic's

By Jeff Merron
Special to Page 2


If the NFL draft is a meat market, the NFL draft combine is where the beef is weighed and measured. Beginning today in Indianapolis, and for several days, our future Sunday heroes will take a full physical, sit for X-rays, face an interview, bench press 225 pounds for show and dough, jump broadly and vertically, and run the 40.

David Carr survived the test to become the No. 1 pick last year.
And, of course, they'll take the Wonderlic.

Click on link below to take the test yourself:

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/closer/020228test.html

The Wonderlic is an IQ test with only 50 questions -- it's a short version of the longer test routinely given to kids. Players have just 12 minutes to take it, and most don't finish. But, in fact, the average NFL test-taker scores a little above average.

The first questions on the test are easy, but they get harder and harder.

An easy question: In the following set of words, which word is different from the others? 1) copper, 2) nickel, 3) aluminum, 4) wood, 5) bronze.

A tougher one: A rectangular bin, completely filled, holds 640 cubic feet of grain. If the bin is 8 feet wide and 10 feet long, how deep is it?

Some teams consider the test results critical. Others say they dismiss the results, except for players who score at the extremes. What's an extreme? Well, former Bengals punter and Harvard grad Pat McInally scored a perfect 50 -- the only NFL player known to do so -- while at least one player, it is rumored, scored a 1. Charlie Wonderlic Jr., president of Wonderlic Inc., says,

"A score of 10 is literacy, that's about all we can say."

If that's the case, more than a few pros are being delivered the Books-on-Tape version of the playbook.

But players scoring too high are also suspect. If a player is smart, his potential to be a smartass increases exponentially.

E.F. "Al" Wonderlic invented the test as a Northwestern grad student in the psychology department in the 1930s.

The test was first given to potential NFL draft picks by a handful of teams in 1970, and it quickly became a popular combine tool because, like everything else at the predraft workout, it put a number on performance, and it did it quickly.

Some teams consider the test results critical. Others say they dismiss the results, except for players who score at the extremes. What's an extreme? Well, former Bengals punter and Harvard grad Pat McInally scored a perfect 50 -- the only NFL player known to do so -- while at least one player, it is rumored, scored a 1.


Each year, about 2.5 million job applicants, in every line of work, take the Wonderlic. The average NFL combiner scores about the same as the average applicant for any other job, a 21.

A 20 indicates the test-taker has an IQ of 100, which is average.

Some people disagree with the whole idea of IQ testing because they believe the tests are culturally biased and inaccurate.

But Charlie Wonderlic doesn't make grand claims for the score derived from his test. "What the score does is help match training methods with a player's ability," he says.

"It could be a playbook -- what is the best way to teach a player a play?
On the field, the higher the IQ, the greater the ability to understand and handle contingencies and make sound decisions on the fly."

In general, says Wonderlic, "The closer you are to the ball, the higher your score."