The NFL is good at plenty of things. The NFL is not good at plenty of other things. The NFL is very bad at keeping Wonderlic scores secret.
Every year, someone from one of the NFL teams (or from the league office) leaks Wonderlic scores, to someone. With nearly a month to go until the 2018 draft, the leaks have commenced regarding his year’s incoming class of players.
I’ve had a complicated relationship with the Wonderlic test. At one point in the ever-evolving life cycle of PFT, I aspired to get the Wonderlic scores, to report them, and to shine the brightest light on the players who, based on the scores, weren’t the brightest bulbs.
But then at some point I realized some things about the Wonderlic. First, plenty of players don’t know about the test. Second, plenty don’t care. Third, the scores don’t mean squat when it comes to assessing football scores. Fourth, the NFL should apply the highest level of secrecy and confidentiality to these numbers, out of respect to the players who are voluntarily submitting to these tests as part of an extended job interview that culminates not in the players picking their first NFL destinations but in their first NFL destinations picking them.
Contrast the league’s chronic inability to secure the Wonderlic scores with the league’s impressive ability to safeguard every PSI test taken in the three football seasons since the dawning of #Deflategate. Has even a single measurement taken ever made its way out of the league’s clutches?
We’ll continue to not post Wonderlic scores. And we’ll continue to advise players to refuse to submit to the test, until the NFL can treat this data the same way the NFL treats PSI measurements that, if leaked, would demonstrate for all that the prosecution of the Patriots was far stupider than any stupidity that ever could be inferred based on the outcome of a Wonderlic exam.