Was Brock Purdy’s emergence predictable? S2 Cognition test has pointed to NFL success If you watched Brock Purdy at last year’s NFL Scouting Combine, you would have seen a quarterback with below-average height, a merely adequate arm and foot speed that, while good, didn’t separate him from the pack. The test he absolutely aced — and one that predicted his brilliant rookie season for the 49ers — was administered out of public view. Purdy landed in the mid 90s on something called the S2 Cognition test, a score you might consider Drew Brees-like. Which is to say, it’s elite. The S2 isn’t an intelligence test like the 50-question Wonderlic exam but rather measures how quickly and accurately athletes process information. It’s like the 40-yard dash for the brain. ”The game will never be too fast for Brock, I’ll say that,” said Brandon Ally, a neuroscientist and cofounder of Nashville-based S2 Cognition. “I don’t think he’ll ever have trouble adjusting.” Ally and his partner, Scott Wylie, have tested more than 40,000 athletes, from big-league batsmen to pro golfers, and the company has contracts with 14 NFL teams. The group already has been testing players at college all-star games during the current draft cycle and will do more testing at next week’s combine in Indianapolis. By the time the draft begins in April, S2 will have scores for more than 800 prospects. “The GMs have become so interested in the data that we start testing as soon as these kids declare,” Ally said. The exam lasts 40 to 45 minutes. It’s performed on a specially designed gaming laptop and response pad that can record reactions in two milliseconds. To put that in perspective, an eye blink lasts 100 to 150 milliseconds. In one section of the exam, a series of diamonds flash on the screen for 16 milliseconds each. Every diamond is missing a point, and the test taker must determine — using left, right, up or down keys — which part is missing. In another, the test seeks to find out how many objects an athlete can keep track of at the same time. In another, there are 22 figures on the screen and the athlete must locate a specific one as quickly as possible. The object might be a red triangle embedded in other shapes that are also red. “We’re talking about things they have to perceive on the screen within 16/1,000th of a second, which is essentially subliminal and which scientific literature says you shouldn’t be able to process,” Ally said. “And I’ll be honest with you, we’re seeing pro baseball players see something way faster than 16 milliseconds, which has never been reported in literature, all the way to some athletes who may take 150 milliseconds. So our eyes may see the same thing. But for some, it takes longer to process than others.” […] He couldn’t give out Purdy’s exact score because it’s privileged information but said it was in the “mid 90s.” That’s about where Brees, the former Saints quarterback famous for lightning-fast decision-making, scored and where two of the top passers in the league now, the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and the Bills’ Josh Allen, also landed. The Bengals’ Joe Burrow took the test while at LSU and agreed to allow S2 to disclose the information. Of course he did — he scored in the 97th percentile. “We consider anything above the 80th percentile to be elite,” Ally said. For decades the NFL used the Wonderlic to measure intelligence. The questions start out easy — What’s the eighth month of the year?, for example — and get progressively more difficult. Most people can’t finish the 12-minute exam. While a high Wonderlic score suggests a quarterback knows how to study and will remember the playbook, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll hold up well against a zero blitz. Brees is a good example. He got a 28 on the Wonderlic, which is very good, but not superior. His S2 score, meanwhile, was exceptional. Ally said the cognition test not only can forecast whether a quarterback will be successful in the NFL, it comes close to predicting the quarterback’s career passer rating. The company recently looked at 27 starting quarterbacks. (Some of the older veterans like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers had entered the league before S2 began testing in 2015 and there are no scores for them; Brees took the test while already playing in the NFL.) Of that group, 13 had a career passer rating above 90. The average S2 score of those players was the 91st percentile. Those with passer ratings below 90 had much lower test results. “Those 14 guys, the average score was in the low 60s,” Ally said. Top-tier quarterbacks have the highest average scores, followed closely by safeties. “The average human being can keep track of about three and a half objects at a time,” Alley said. “The average safety in the NFL, it’s closer to six.” The positions with the third-highest scores: linebacker and cornerback. […] The highest S2 score in last year’s draft class, in fact, was turned in by a cornerback, Trent McDuffie, who started 15 games for the Chiefs, including the Super Bowl. Purdy’s score wasn’t too far behind. According to Ally, the 49ers quarterback did particularly well in three areas. One of them was spatial awareness, which translates in several aspects of the game, including how well a quarterback can assess a defense before the snap. Another area in which Purdy excelled was distraction control. “Those are the guys — and Drew Brees was one of those — who, the pocket, the world could be collapsing around them and they can just maintain that steely focus on what they’re supposed to be doing,” Ally said. Finally, Purdy was especially impressive when it came to depth perception speed. “He was in some pretty elite company,” Ally said. “I mean, he was in the high 90s on that.” […] As for the 49ers’ other young quarterback, Trey Lance? Ally couldn’t reveal the exact number but said Lance “scored well.” “He’s not in the Brock Purdy range but he didn’t score poorly,” he said. The question every general manager will be asking between now and the April draft is which quarterback is the next Brock Purdy, the passer everyone overlooks because he’s not physically imposing but whose brain can help salvage a season? Ally said he couldn’t divulge scores, but he did say the 2023 quarterback results were dramatically better than last year when only Purdy and one other quarterback scored above the 90th percentile. “We’ve been doing the NFL draft for seven years,” Ally said. “From an S2 Cognitive perspective, last year was the worst year we’ve ever had score-wise. And this year is by far and away the best we’ve ever had, score-wise, at the quarterback position.” He hinted that the quarterback whom many believe will be the first player drafted had an impressive score. “I do have a feeling that a quarterback from Alabama that we have tested every year since he was in 10th grade may end up sharing his results publicly because he actually owns those results and the NFL does not,” Ally said.
Really interesting find JR. Now we're all wondering everyone's scores and how Caserio views this type of testing.
This would make me feel better about Bryce Young, but what if Levis or Richardson scored about the same with all the physical attribute advantages? If they were competitive in this regard and, what I believe to be the case, are available at 12. The best course of action would be to wait for that pick.
Very neat information. Really highlights how at least some of the nfl teams have way more information than the general public. When there's this strong of a correlation between QBs who perform well and high S2 cognitive scores, a team would be foolish to ignore it. I'm pretty sure the Texans will take data and analytics very seriously as Nick Caserio seems like that type, Bobby Slowik used to work at PFF, and they just hired a sports science guy. Hopefully at least 3 of the 4 top prospects are above the 90th percentile.
Yes. Great info. Thanks J.R. Any of the guys showing up as premier in this regard would be foolish not to publicize it. Wonder why they don’t.
