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With Super Bowl LIII already over with the New England Patriots stealing away a sweet victory from the Los Angeles Rams, marking their third consecutive Super Bowl appearance that also culminated to Julian Edelman being named MVP of the game, NFL fans and NFL aspirants are sure to be more than excited to know just how can they be like their favorite NFL player.
Whether you are a Tom Brady fan that wants to step up to his fame or a Los Angeles Rams fan that is more than riled up to take revenge against the Patriots one day by becoming an NFL player in the future and settling the score, one thing is sure: you’ll need more than just guts.
Having good physical prowess and athletic skill is vital to an NFL player, yes, but unlike what your stereotypical Saturday morning cartoons depict, they also rely on good decision-making skills and cunningness in order to outsmart their rivals in a matter of seconds.
After all, American football is not just a game of who can outrun their opponents to get a touchdown or throwing or kicking the ball farther.
When picking a player, an NFL team looks to more than just a prospective player’s appearances.
You see, when a quarterback is in the middle of a play and his opponents are closing in on him, he needs to quickly evaluate the situation and decide how best to proceed.
Should he make a wrong judgement call, or fail to make one in the span of a split-second, he may just cost his team the entire game.
Before being drafted into the team, managers sometimes look to one crucial detail on a player’s profile: their Wonderlic score.
The Wonderlic Test is a psychometric exam that tests a person’s concentration, spatial reasoning, and resourcefulness by making test takers answer 50 multiple choice questions in only 12 minutes.
According to the NFL Combine, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has a Wonderlic score of 33 while Los Angeles Rams quarterback Jared Goff has a score of 36.
If you want to see if you can best Brady or Goff’s score, why not give it a go at the free Wonderlic Practice Test?
Also listed below are the general average Wonderlic scores according to position.
· Offensive Tackle: 26
· Center: 25
· Quarterback: 24
· Guard: 23
· Tight end: 22
· Safety: 19
· Linebacker: 19
· Cornerback: 18
· Wide Receiver: 17
· Fullback: 17
· Halfback: 16
The Wonderlic was made by Eldon Wonderlic while he was a graduate psychology student at Northwestern with the questions being designed to be challenging, even for intelligent and well-educated test-takers, and as seen above, most NFL players rarely go beyond the halfway score.
To make things worse, many of the questions are specifically designed to trick you.
If you haven’t studied them and learned how to answer them quickly, then you’re likely to get ripped apart.
The difficulty of the questions varies from easy, such as making the examinee pick which word from the set of words “copper, nickel, aluminum, wood” is different, to having to determine how deep an 8-feet wide and 10-feet long rectangular bin is if it can hold 640 cubic feet of grain.
To make things worse, one only has around 14 seconds per question in order to answer all 50 questions regardless of difficulty, forcing test takers to prioritize which item to take first.
This encourages examinees to think of new and creative ways to solve a problem efficiently and correctly.
Although the Wonderlic was originally designed as a screening exam for employers hiring new staff members, it’s also widely known for its use in the NFL draft in helping NFL teams determine if a player can effectively react to changing circumstances and make good judgement calls, solve complex problems, and think clearly while under pressure.
