Control the Narrative: Why the “Next” Lamar Jackson should refuse to take the Wonderlic Test
Score high and scouts will still label you a “running” QB; score low and scouts will question your intellectual capacity. It’s a no-win situation for any athletic African-American QB . . . so why take the Wonderlic Test at all?
Khalil Tate, I hope you read this.
For those who are unfamiliar with Khalil Tate, he’s the 6'2, 215-pound, starting QB for the Arizona Wildcats. He’s a dark horse Heisman candidate this season and might be college football’s most electrifying player. It’s tough to project Tate’s NFL potential yet because last season was his first as a starter and he was playing in a Rich Rodriguez offense, but he sure seems to have all the tools of an NFL QB.
No matter how well Tate performs the rest of his college career, I can guarantee one thing about his NFL Draft process — he’ll get asked about potentially switching to RB or WR. How do I know this? Uh, because he’s an athletic African-American QB and that’s just the way the antiquated NFL works — old white scouts and draft analysts see an athletic African-American QB in college football and they say he’s “talented, but very raw”, describe him as a “project that will need some grooming” and suggest that whatever team drafts him should experiment with using him as a RB or WR. They might even question his work ethic, pocket presence and leadership abilities while they’re at it.
Sound like a familiar description? It should — because Tate’s prototype, Lamar Jackson, is getting the same treatment right now. By now, you’ve no doubt heard most of the hypocritical takes on Jackson from the likes of ESPN’s Front Office Expert Bill Polian, who thinks Jackson is “short and a bit slight” for a QB (he’s 6'3, 211-pounds) and that “he might be a receiver.” Or from ESPN’s Draft Expert Mel Kiper Jr., who says “stats are for losers” when referring to fellow-QB prospect (and Caucasian) Josh Allen’s 56% completion rate, but has been critical of Jackson’s “accuracy throwing the football” (he completed 59% of his passes last season). This is obviously not a new trend and has been happening since the dawn of the NFL.
Since the NFL evaluators aren’t going to stop with this nonsense anytime soon, the question becomes how does a QB like Khalil Tate avoid letting these unfair stereotypes hurt his draft stock/career? He can’t wait around until every scout and coach who rooted for Ray Budds and Coach Tyrell in Remember The Titans retires, right? No way — those MF-ers will be around football for longer than Jerry Jones. Instead, they’ve got to do what Lamar Jackson almost did: Control the narrative — I’m a QB. Not duel-threat QB. Not mobile QB. Not a running QB. A QB. Period.
Notice I said almost. Jackson came so close to playing this draft process perfectly. He made it abundantly clear that he would only be participating in QB drills at the Combine and his Pro Day. He didn’t even entertain the idea of participating in any WR or RB drills. He even refused to run in the 40-yard dash!
(Imagine the outrage the old white scouts with their shiny stopwatches must have felt when they heard that news — “Wait, you mean we can’t just force him to go run around and jump and catch balls like the good ole days? Not my NFL Combine!” Sad!)
Yes, Jackson had the old white scouts and analysts so flummoxed that they had to resort to criticizing the fact that he isn’t hiring an agent, but having his mother (and a lawyer) represent him instead. How dare he only trust the people closest to him! But alas, Jackson made one mistake in attempting to control the narrative — he took a test designed for people with desk jobs, not football players. You guessed it, the infamous Wonderlic Test.
The Wonderlic Test is a critical thinking test designed for employers to use in interviews on employees who will be sitting behind a desk all day, talking to co-workers about how their fantasy football team fared that weekend. It is a critical thinking test that has nothing to do with reading coverages, identifying the “Mike” linebacker, knowing your hot routes and being able to get to your second or third read with five or six 6'4, 250-pound human torpedoes barreling down at you. The critical thinking test is not even an intelligence test either — there are plenty of smart people who have performed poorly on the Wonderlic Test for one reason or another.
By taking the test, he allowed a pretty much meaningless critical thinking test to play a role in his QB evaluation. Even if Jackson had scored a perfect 50 on the Wonderlic Test, it was the wrong move to take the test — he would still be viewed as a mobile QB with accuracy concerns from the pocket. If he scored under 20 (the average score), his intelligence would be questioned.
Jackson is a smart player — he wouldn’t have been able to run Bobby Petrino’s pro-style offense at Louisville if he wasn’t a sharp kid. He wouldn’t have put up the insane numbers he put up in college if he wasn’t a student of the game. What was the upside to him taking the test? That’s a rhetorical question — there was zero upside to him taking the test.
But Jackson did take the Wonderlic Test and he scored a 13 on it. Now, we’re right back to where we started in this draft process with racially charged questions — only this time, old white scouts and analysts are questioning whether Jackson is smart enough to play QB in the NFL.
It remains to be seen how this score impacts his draft position (hopefully, it means that he falls to the end of the 1st Round and the Steelers scoop him up). Regardless of the impact, I can almost guarantee that his low Wonderlic Test score gets brought up.
Now, this isn’t to say that athletic African-American QBs should be afraid to take the Wonderlic Test — they shouldn’t be, at all. Plenty of notable QBs had scores in the 10–16 range (Jeff George, Donovan McNabb, Terry Bradshaw, Steve McNair, Jim Kelly, Randall Cunningham, Dan Marino). However, it’s unfortunately a zero-upside proposition because of the antiquated mindsets of many of the draft evaluators.
So, Khalil Tate, if you ever read this, don’t do RB and WR drills at the NFL Combine or Arizona Pro Day, don’t run the 40-yard dash and don’t take the Wonderlic Test. Control the narrative — make the old white evaluators scout you on your QB abilities, and your QB abilities alone.
Thanks for reading. Check out more of Pat Heery’s work at The Has Been Sports Blog.
