It just wouldn’t be draft season without some idiocy from the Vikings. Although the team denies it, the New York Post is reporting that the Vikings have offered both the GM and Head Coaching positions to Bill Parcells. You know, if he weren’t 71, it might be worth a look, but this is ridiculous.
Just like some teams, and Dopers, are wary of WRs who run 4.3 40s? It’s the exact same thing. Yes, the Wonderlic tests a very specific skill set that might have dubious application to the football field. But so does the 40, which tests a very specific skill set that isn’t frequently replicated on the field. The Wonderlic asks players to do pattern matching, there aren’t squares and squiggly lines on game tape but there are patterns and spatial analysis. Just like WRs don’t get into a 3-point stance in track shoes without pads on the football field, but being able to accelerate from a standstill is important.
You can argue that the Wonderlic is meaningless and I’m sure many coaches do as well, but then you also have to conclude that everything in the Combine aside from medical tests are meaningless. None of it replicates anything on the field, but that’s not really the goal. The goal is to create an objective set of evaluations that coaches and GMs can weight however they so choose. Sure, game tape should probably trump everything but we measure this other stuff anyways. When I hear what Jimmy Johnson says I see truth in it and I’m sure plenty of other coaches have similar negative experiences with players who flunked the Wonderlic. They also probably have negative experiences with players who ran slow or were weak at the bench press too.
Why are they wary of those receivers?
Right, and that’s a sensible goal. But the fact that the test is objective does not mean it’s reliable or useful.
I do, too. But I don’t think that speaks to this test in particular. It speaks to the kinds of errors Johnson (and almost every personnel department in sports) is prone to making- namely taking chances on guys who don’t have the physical tools to be great if they pull it all together, but don’t have great instincts or intelligence or even the common sense to stay out of trouble. And often, those guys never pull it together.
No idea, but it probably has to do with a bias about “track guys” not being able to play in the NFL. The checkered past of guys like Darius Heyward-Bey and Chad Jackson probably have a lot to do with it. In any case this bias is every bit as silly and pointless as a coach who would shy away from a player who scored really high on the Wonderlic because he’s “too smart” and “not tough” or whatever stereotyping that would happen. In pretty much all cases being “too good” at anything is a idiotic thing to negatively weight. Using that as a basis for disparaging the test is pretty damn thin.
Certainly a fair debate. But to question the reliability and usefulness of one Combine activity and disregard the much debated usefulness of the others misses the point. You can call the Combine garbage if you want and people can disagree. But I see no reason to single out the Wonderlic.
If you don’t have the common sense to prepare enough for the Wonderlic to not completely embarrass yourself then I’m guessing you don’t have the common sense to stay out of trouble or show up to meetings. It’s just like the guy who shows up to the Combine horribly out of shape, if you aren’t disciplined enough to get in shape for the job interview then why should a team trust that you’ll stay in shape during the off season? If a guy doesn’t study for the Wonderlic why would you think he’d study game tape?
Failing the Wonderlic catastrophically indicates 2 things, first that you didn’t prepare which has clear ramifications for your future career. Second it shows that you aren’t natively smart enough to get a middling score on just smarts. The former is pretty indefensible, the latter you can question how relevant that is.
Also, with Claiborne you have to wonder how the fuck he got into college and then stayed in college if he really has such a crippling “disability.” No idea what his grades or graduation status is, but it makes you wonder how many rules he was breaking at school. Lots of players probably cheat their way through school, but it’s another “character” red flag and calls into question what kind of citizen he would be in the NFL.
Personally I don’t believe the learning disability thing for a second. But, if it’s true I’d have to wonder why the heck we’re just hearing about it now, why his agent knew nothing about it and how he survived at LSU with it. Is this going to be a Dexter Manley situation?
Well this isn’t good.
You think IQ tests measure work ethic and attention to detail? Really? No. Just no. IQ tests measure the abilities that allow people to get away with having a shitty work ethic and/or not paying attention to detail.
NFL teams see value in a lot of things, but NFL coaches do a lot of really dumb things as a result of groupthink (see “keeping Peyton Manning off the field”, punting on 4th and 2 and the opponents’ 35).
…and that makes perfect sense. It’s pretty well established that guys who run a zillion miles per hour in shorts and a singlet may not be very fast in pads and a helmet (and vice versa).
I’ve always wondered why they don’t do the combine tests in their gear and uniforms.
I think a lot of the combine is nonsense, and certainly everybody is wary of workout wonders. But I think it’s easier to see why a learning and problem-solving test might have less to do with football than a test of strength or speed.
And I think it indicates your agent did a bad job preparing you for the draft process, which has very little to do with how good you are at playing football. In the case of Claiborne, people are saying he does have a legitimate learning disability - maybe something like dyslexia, which would make it difficult to do well on a 12-minute, 50-question test no matter how much he practices (some guys practice a ton) - and Bus Cook is a numbskull who was not aware of Claiborne’s disability even though it is (according to source) well-documented. He’s also supposed to be diligent about studying game tape, if he has a disability or is just not very bright, it apparently didn’t hurt his play. Which again makes you wonder why we’re supposed to care that someone - probably a team hoping he’ll fall a few spots so they can pick him - leaked his score.
Schools make accomodations for students with learning disabilities. I have no idea whatsoever how Claiborne’s high school and LSU might have dealt with his problems. Difficulty reading does not mean you’re stupid and can’t get into or stay in college. The fact that this discussion has progressed from “Is the Wonderlic useful?” to “Mo Claiborne’s low score suggests he’s stupid, lazy, unprepared, and that LSU probably broke NCAA rules in admitting him and that he’ll be trouble in the NFL” makes me very confident this thing is totally useless.
And hey, the disability story about be bullshit and LSU could have cooked the books for Claiborne. I don’t have much trouble believing they do that kind of thing. But there’s no actual evidence for that - certainly we can’t come to that conclusion based on his score on the Wonderlic. And he’ll probably still be picked around sixth in the draft, which suggests the teams don’t care very much either.
No, just no. IQ tests, and you can debate if the Wonderlic qualifies as one, are intended to generally test cognitive ability but you CAN study for them. Every kid that’s ever gotten into college or professional who’s taken the GMAT knows this and Kaplan and similar companies have invested a lot of energy into preparing people for these standardized tests. If you get a 4 that tells me that you didn’t prepare at all and don’t have the work ethic to get into at least the standard deviation. Once you’ve prepared for it there’s a threshold on how good of a score you can get based on smarts, but bombing it completely tells me that you didn’t even try.
You can prepare for them, but that doesn’t actually say anything about your work ethic. Claiborne might just be that dumb.
I think we have a very different understanding of the definition of work ethic.
No, we just have a very different understanding of the breadth of human intellect. If Claiborne doesn’t understand the questions (or has a severe learning disability, as mentioned above), it may not matter how much preparation he does.
The point is that unless you know what he would have scored without preparation (assuming he did any), there’s no way to extrapolate any information about his work ethic from his test score.
Completely disagree. Problem solving, recognition and cognitive reasoning are very applicable, especially for a defender. Maybe you can make a case that a DL or a RB might not have much need for it, but most offensive players and coverage players will have to do all that. 40 time might be one of the better ones, but I think the skills the Wonderlic tests for have a much clearer application than high jump or 3 cone shuttle.
If Claiborne really does have a well documented learning disability then his agent was a failure of colossal proportion. Personally I’m a little more inclined to believe that the “well documented learning disability” is either a fabrication or an excuse that’s been used by Claiborne throughout his academic career than that Bus Cook was totally out to lunch. That said, Bus Cook represented Vince Young too so maybe he just doesn’t prepare anyone for the test.
If the learning disability exists I’d say that the Wonderlic was very valuable for NFL teams in helping them uncover it. Had this learning disability gone undiagnosed prior to the draft the NFL teams wouldn’t have known what they were buying. That said, teams will have to dig deeper to determine if the disability really had no effect on his playing ability or if LSU’s coaches spoon fed him game plans and/or devised scheme where all he had to do was react and never study/think. Maybe he’s dyslexic and that will have no impact on his ability to study game film and react on the field, or maybe he’s just really dumb and his scheme is college never asked him to do anything but be athletic. In either case the Wonderlic was valuable in that it instructed the NFL teams looking at him to be cautious and where to do a little extra homework on him. That’s really the whole point of the Combine tests afterall.
It’s made teams do extra homework. That’s useful. The Combine tests aren’t supposed to be there to help you draw conclusions, they are there to highlight what it is that you do or don’t know. Thus far it’s been useful. If teams spend the next 3 weeks checking up on Claiborne to find out if he has a reading problem that’s irrelevant or if he’s a slacker who’s manipulated the system all along then they have gotten valuable info from the test.
Right, you can’t draw conclusions based on the score, but you can start asking questions.
Problem solving? Really? “If a pass travels at 22 feet per second, and the safety breaks on its aim point from the right hash mark at 7 feet per second, how quickly do I have to complete this catch in order to avoid being killed”?
What is the draft potential of Nick Toon out of Wisconsin? Is he considered a first two days of the draft pick? What are they saying about him, his plusses and his minuses?
I think you can say almost anything invovles problem solving and cognitive reasoning if you describe it vaguely enough, but I take your point. Stilll, why not ask him to do something like judge what a wideout is going to do or evaluate a formation - something that actually has to do with a defensive back’s job?
Right.
Yes. Of course they also could have obtained this information by talking to Claiborne or anyone who worked with him on the defensive side of the ball at LSU. At the end of the day it still sounds like he’ll be picked about an hour into the first round on the 26th.
Early discussion had him as a second rounder. Since the combine and the escalation of some of the other prospects I think he’s slipped into the third round. He’s tough and productive but generally he’s not considered athletic enough to be an elite prospects. I was high on him as a target for the Bears back in November, but I’ve since cooled on him quite a bit. Would love to get him in the 4th round, but in the 3rd I think you might be overpaying a little. Of course this will depend on if guys like Randle, Sanu and others go early or not. Most pundits assume that the WR class will go ealy and often which could boost Toon’s status.
The teams do do this. They have an interview with them and they let them go up on the whiteboard and everything. The issue is that teams only have 10 minutes (IIRC) to do this and not every team uses that 10 minutes to talk Xs and Os, some use it to dive into character questions and personality/fit questions. There’s 300 something players at the Combine and 32 teams, there just isn’t enough time to havethat conversation with everyone. The test fills that gap, and when something happens with Claiborne they can then schedule a private interview later to have those in depth conversations, but it’s unrealistic to think every team in going to be able to have that interview with every prospect, you need a shorthand to highlight areas of concern. The test works for that.
As noted, they probably couldn’t have gotten all the info they needed at the Combine, there wasn’t enough time. They’ll spend that time now doing that homework. I agree it probably won’t hurt his draft stock much unless something really bad is uncovered with the enhanced scrutiny. I suspect he’s gonna be drafted in the first 20 minutes, let alone the first hour. But, now the Browns and Bucs can start doing some extra digging to be sure. They probably would have done this digging anyways since he’s a top 5 pick, but for players in the middle rounds the test is much more helpful in highlighting these things.
When the Vince Young Wonderlic score was reported several years back, I agreed with this position. Since then, however, this relationship has been formally studied. Lyons, Hoffman, & Michel (2009) reported that there is no correlation between Wonderlic score and performance. The key statistic is that they found a correlation of r=-0.04 overall. For defensive backs, they reported a *negative * correlation (r = -0.21, significant at p < 0.05) [They did find a possible positive correlation for quarterbacks, but not at a significant level. They suggest that the lack of significance could result from the study format]. The authors’ hypothesis is that a good defensive back reacts instinctively, since the gap between open/covered is so small at the NFL level.
He visited with the Bengals early this week. I hope they land him. Our defensive line is starting to really come along and he would really help.
I see Nick Toon as a decent pickup in the 3rd round, but no earlier. As child of the 80s and 90, though, how could I not like a guy named “Nick Toon” ?? 