With #4 We Should Draft

[USFBrown]

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/04/03/claiborne-gives-birth-to-a-four-on-the-wonderlic/

 

 

Claiborne gives birth to a four on the Wonderlic

Posted by Mike Florio on April 3, 2012, 7:18 AM EDT

 

 

The NFL has kept the Wonderlic results under tighter wraps than usual this year. Or maybe the media has had enough other things to keep itself occupied.

 

Regardless, the first eye-opening score has leaked from the 2012 edition of the 50-question Wonderlic test. Per multiple league sources, LSU cornerback Morris Claiborne scored a four.

 

Yes. A four. Out of 50.

 

Six years ago, quarterback Vince Young initially got a six. Re-scoring of the test bumped it to a seven. A next-day Mulligan moved it to 13.

 

Finally, Young has someone at whom he can point and laugh.

 

The joke, however, continues to be on anyone who thinks that all college athletes are also students. Plenty of them aren’t. They’re minor-league football players who have no choice but to wait at least three years until they get a shot at joining the NFL.

 

How else can anyone explain a person who presumably has found a way to avoid failing out of college getting such a low score on a basic intelligence test?

 

And that gives rise to a more important question. What did LSU actually do to keep Claiborne from failing out of school?

[USFBrown]

Think this will have any impact on his draft status?

[Harry Buffalo]

Not with us. We have our CB play in man coverage over 90% of the time, you don't need to be smart to do that. His stock most likely dropped for teams who run mostly zone or man/zone at 50/50, but for a team like the Browns I doubt he has fallen hardly at all, if any.

[Unsympathetic]

Perhaps this is the scenario Heck is thinking about regarding trading down with StL: Browns trade back to 6, get an additional second-round pick, and select Michael Floyd?

 

Floyd is neck-and-neck with Blackmon.. and nearly everyone in the second round should start for us.

 

With a starting WR1, 22 should be Martin if available.. then we have 2 more picks in rd2 to find a new OG and a new LB.

[ClevelandBigDawg]

Read this on Twitter and died - "Morris Claiborne is gonna be screwed when his man says "Paper sells for 21 cents per pad. What will four pads cost?" during a route."

[ClevelandFanForLife]

Anyone else see the irony in the fact that Claiborn's draft spot could be the same as his Wonderlic score? Has to be a record (at least for a guy in the top 10).

[calfoxwc]

I don't think it's possible to seriously get a four, or six, on that test.

 

More likely, surely, is that they thought it was a farce, and just marked

 

an answer without worrying whether they read the question or not.

 

Surely that isn't an honest score.

[DawginIT]

I've taken a sample wonderlic test I saw only and got about a 50%. I'm a pretty smart guy but the questions are SOOOO easy that you can easily overthink them or not take them seriously. I don't think it's a big deal.

[4Browns]

ESPN has sample Wonderlic questions. I got 13/15 and I am not claiming to be a genius. If these questions really represent the difficulty of the test you would have to be a complete dumbass to get 4/50 right.

 

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/closer/020228test.html

[cribbs is the man]

ESPN has sample Wonderlic questions. I got 13/15 and I am not claiming to be a genius. If these questions really represent the difficulty of the test you would have to be a complete dumbass to get 4/50 right.

 

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/closer/020228test.html

 

Yea the questions seem to be middle school level for the most part. Either he really is that dumb or he didnt care. I think the "didnt care" side is more problematic to me. To have the lack of responsibility, focus, maturity etc. to not take a 30 minute quiz (or however long it is) is really troubling to me.. How does that translate into the attention to detail needed in the film room or the practice field??

[Kosar_For_President]

14/15. What a dumb shit.

[DieselPusher]

Are we limited to answering the questions in 4 minutes. I thought they had to answer 50 questions in 12 minutes.

[Tour2ma]

So much for Maurice...

 

... and its back on the Ingram bandwagon...

[Canton Mike]

14 of 15 & I am a high school graduate with no college.

I find it disgusting & literally unbelievable that anyone could score a 4. That is either total indifference with lack of effort or a lack of intelligence & pride. How many of you would pay a person for that? Not I.

Mike

[hoorta]

ESPN has sample Wonderlic questions. I got 13/15 and I am not claiming to be a genius. If these questions really represent the difficulty of the test you would have to be a complete dumbass to get 4/50 right.

 

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/closer/020228test.html

 

Right- 4\50 is so dumb- you can't spell cat correctly- even if they spot you the c and t. The 9th month of they year is_________ . Yarn is 10 cents a foot, you have 30 cents, how many feet of yarn can you buy? OTOH, they do throw in several questions in word association and proportional math problems that you do have to be both extremely attentive and intelligent to not screw up in the allotted time. IIRC, Ryan Fitzpatrick (3.98 GPA @ Harvard) is the only NFL player ever to ace it. Steve Young- who eventually got a law degree, scored in the mid 30s.

 

 

 

Are we limited to answering the questions in 4 minutes. I thought they had to answer 50 questions in 12 minutes.

 

fewer questions = less time to answer.

 

Finally- MHO is that piss poor Wonderlic score will hurt Claiborne's draft status. Fer example, some teams won't draft a qb if he scores less than 20.

[PoeticG]

I spoke with Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Harvard-educated starting quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, around NFL Combine time last year. Draft prospects were taking the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test in Indianapolis and I wanted to chat with a guy who’d nearly aced it.

 

When Fitzpatrick took the Wonderlic in 2005, he got just one question wrong. His score was reportedly one of the highest ever recorded by an NFL Draft prospect.

 

“Is the Wonderlic a good indicator of how a player will perform at the next level?” I asked Fitzpatrick, expecting a thorough Ivy League analysis of the test, its benefits, and the way it pinpoints the league’s next superstars.

 

He just laughed.

 

And then he laughed again.

 

Fitzpatrick said that although he could see a potential connection between answering 50 questions against a ticking clock in a classroom and being able to process information at a rapid pace on the field, he wouldn’t read too much into a prospect’s test scores.

 

“Dan Marino had a low score when he took it, right?” He asked. “I think his career turned out just fine.”

 

I thought about my conversation with Fitzpatrick on Tuesday when ProFootballTalk.com’s report that Morris Claiborne scored a 4 out of 50 on his Wonderlic hit the web in the early a.m. hours.

 

I cringed when I saw the deluge of Twitter and message board snark that followed. My emails about the news were drenched in hackneyed jokes and lazy cracks.

 

“Will the team that drafts him draw up the plays in crayon for him?” One reader wrote. Quickly followed by, “Just kidding. Where do you see him going now?”

 

I just finished watching several of Claiborne’s LSU game tapes, and I can tell you with great confidence that he is the top college cornerback we’ve seen enter the NFL Draft since Darrelle Revis left Pittsburgh in 2007. Claiborne was a better corner in college than his teammate Patrick Peterson and had better range than 2010’s seventh overall pick, Joe Haden.

 

Claiborne is a good kid, too. Ask anyone who follows the SEC and has had the chance to cross paths with him, and they’ll tell you that he’s a soft-spoken, polite kid from Shreveport, La.

 

He also has a learning disability.

 

According to Greg Gabriel at the National Football Post, Claiborne’s disability — though not specified— isn’t a secret around the league. When he was recruited out of high school, it was made clear to the various big-time college programs courting him that he’d need academic advisors and assistance in the classroom once he selected a school.

 

After deciding to attend LSU, Claiborne didn’t fade away and let the rigors of the college environment swallow him whole. He worked with tutors and utilized LSU’s various on-campus learning resources to get the grades he needed to stay academically eligible and compete.

 

Claiborne’s time in college should be celebrated. Hell, it’d make for a decent movie. Local kid defies the odds, attends the state’s university, gets enrolled in the right classes and goes on to make millions starring in the NFL. It’s as feel-good a story as you’ll get in today’s world of college athletics.

 

Instead, Claiborne is the joke of the Internet this week. He’s the “idiot” and the “jock” that couldn’t break double digits on an archaic, obsolete test that has no real relevance. He’s forced to defend himself on Twitter, as he did Tuesday, when he sent out a string of Tweets, including one that read, “If u don't have haters u not doing something! It's good to know I do. So keep tweeting. I love it!”

 

Whether Claiborne even scored a 4 is really neither here nor there, though.

 

The real issue is that the report was even leaked at all. Whether true or false, it’s a nefarious act from an individual or individuals who clearly have some incentives to damage a young man.

 

Did the score come from a team that wants to draft Claiborne and thought the information would stray another team away from doing so? Or was it from an agent trying to better position his own client, potentially a top cornerback, himself? You’ll drive yourself crazy playing Andy Sipowicz trying to figure that one out.

 

But we should know.

 

We should have the name of the tough guy who went public with information that’s supposed to be highly confidential.

 

The NFL conducts these tests in what are described as highly secure environments. The results are not intended to be leaked. And yet, here we are today, and Claiborne’s woeful Wonderlic is the biggest football headline of the day.

 

The truth is, Claiborne’s score won’t impact his draft stock in April. I assure you that he’ll be the first cornerback taken in the draft, regardless of how he performed with a No. 2 pencil in Indy.

 

He’ll get over it. He’ll use it as motivation. He’ll come out angry and he’ll have a fine NFL career. This will all be forgotten and five years from now, the same message board commenters that were mocking him today will be wearing his jersey and selling his game-used mouth guard on eBay.

 

But the slime that sheepishly — and worse off, anonymously — shared his score with a media outlet will never have to deal with it. He’ll continue to sit on his computer behind a desk and just know that he made a good kid feel bad today. He’ll know that he leaked a kid with a learning disability’s standardized test score to the world without providing any of the context that should have gone along with it.

 

He’ll sleep fine and likely won’t have to face any repercussions.

 

But I wish he would.

 

Roger Goodell’s all about security and the purity of the game. His stance on Bountygate was aggressive and firm. If the NFL is going to ask its draft prospects to take an exam under the assumption that the results won’t be made public, they should honor that agreement. Otherwise, why would any of these kids even bother?

 

Morris Claiborne could have walked out of that room and said, “I’ll be a top-10 pick regardless of what I score on this. What’s the point?” Hell, if his score’s going to be discussed on SportsCenter three weeks before the draft, he should have done that.

 

If you’re going to hold these kids responsible and ask them to honor their end of the pre-draft process, you should hold all parties responsible for it, too.

 

Maybe I’m getting too worked up over this.

 

After all, the test means nothing.

 

Just ask the guy who nearly aced it.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Link: http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/Morris-Claiborne-NFL-draft-LSU-Wonderlic-score-040312

 

 

Here is an article defending Claiborn... I happen to side with him on this. Poor kid, he seems really nice... so what if he didn't get a good grade, at least he tried...

[choco]

^nice find!

[Harry Buffalo]

I spoke with Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Harvard-educated starting quarterback of the Buffalo Bills, around NFL Combine time last year. Draft prospects were taking the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test in Indianapolis and I wanted to chat with a guy who’d nearly aced it.

 

When Fitzpatrick took the Wonderlic in 2005, he got just one question wrong. His score was reportedly one of the highest ever recorded by an NFL Draft prospect.

 

“Is the Wonderlic a good indicator of how a player will perform at the next level?” I asked Fitzpatrick, expecting a thorough Ivy League analysis of the test, its benefits, and the way it pinpoints the league’s next superstars.

 

He just laughed.

 

And then he laughed again.

 

Fitzpatrick said that although he could see a potential connection between answering 50 questions against a ticking clock in a classroom and being able to process information at a rapid pace on the field, he wouldn’t read too much into a prospect’s test scores.

 

“Dan Marino had a low score when he took it, right?” He asked. “I think his career turned out just fine.”

 

I thought about my conversation with Fitzpatrick on Tuesday when ProFootballTalk.com’s report that Morris Claiborne scored a 4 out of 50 on his Wonderlic hit the web in the early a.m. hours.

 

I cringed when I saw the deluge of Twitter and message board snark that followed. My emails about the news were drenched in hackneyed jokes and lazy cracks.

 

“Will the team that drafts him draw up the plays in crayon for him?” One reader wrote. Quickly followed by, “Just kidding. Where do you see him going now?”

 

I just finished watching several of Claiborne’s LSU game tapes, and I can tell you with great confidence that he is the top college cornerback we’ve seen enter the NFL Draft since Darrelle Revis left Pittsburgh in 2007. Claiborne was a better corner in college than his teammate Patrick Peterson and had better range than 2010’s seventh overall pick, Joe Haden.

 

Claiborne is a good kid, too. Ask anyone who follows the SEC and has had the chance to cross paths with him, and they’ll tell you that he’s a soft-spoken, polite kid from Shreveport, La.

 

He also has a learning disability.

 

According to Greg Gabriel at the National Football Post, Claiborne’s disability — though not specified— isn’t a secret around the league. When he was recruited out of high school, it was made clear to the various big-time college programs courting him that he’d need academic advisors and assistance in the classroom once he selected a school.

 

After deciding to attend LSU, Claiborne didn’t fade away and let the rigors of the college environment swallow him whole. He worked with tutors and utilized LSU’s various on-campus learning resources to get the grades he needed to stay academically eligible and compete.

 

Claiborne’s time in college should be celebrated. Hell, it’d make for a decent movie. Local kid defies the odds, attends the state’s university, gets enrolled in the right classes and goes on to make millions starring in the NFL. It’s as feel-good a story as you’ll get in today’s world of college athletics.

 

Instead, Claiborne is the joke of the Internet this week. He’s the “idiot” and the “jock” that couldn’t break double digits on an archaic, obsolete test that has no real relevance. He’s forced to defend himself on Twitter, as he did Tuesday, when he sent out a string of Tweets, including one that read, “If u don't have haters u not doing something! It's good to know I do. So keep tweeting. I love it!”

 

Whether Claiborne even scored a 4 is really neither here nor there, though.

 

The real issue is that the report was even leaked at all. Whether true or false, it’s a nefarious act from an individual or individuals who clearly have some incentives to damage a young man.

 

Did the score come from a team that wants to draft Claiborne and thought the information would stray another team away from doing so? Or was it from an agent trying to better position his own client, potentially a top cornerback, himself? You’ll drive yourself crazy playing Andy Sipowicz trying to figure that one out.

 

But we should know.

 

We should have the name of the tough guy who went public with information that’s supposed to be highly confidential.

 

The NFL conducts these tests in what are described as highly secure environments. The results are not intended to be leaked. And yet, here we are today, and Claiborne’s woeful Wonderlic is the biggest football headline of the day.

 

The truth is, Claiborne’s score won’t impact his draft stock in April. I assure you that he’ll be the first cornerback taken in the draft, regardless of how he performed with a No. 2 pencil in Indy.

 

He’ll get over it. He’ll use it as motivation. He’ll come out angry and he’ll have a fine NFL career. This will all be forgotten and five years from now, the same message board commenters that were mocking him today will be wearing his jersey and selling his game-used mouth guard on eBay.

 

But the slime that sheepishly — and worse off, anonymously — shared his score with a media outlet will never have to deal with it. He’ll continue to sit on his computer behind a desk and just know that he made a good kid feel bad today. He’ll know that he leaked a kid with a learning disability’s standardized test score to the world without providing any of the context that should have gone along with it.

 

He’ll sleep fine and likely won’t have to face any repercussions.

 

But I wish he would.

 

Roger Goodell’s all about security and the purity of the game. His stance on Bountygate was aggressive and firm. If the NFL is going to ask its draft prospects to take an exam under the assumption that the results won’t be made public, they should honor that agreement. Otherwise, why would any of these kids even bother?

 

Morris Claiborne could have walked out of that room and said, “I’ll be a top-10 pick regardless of what I score on this. What’s the point?” Hell, if his score’s going to be discussed on SportsCenter three weeks before the draft, he should have done that.

 

If you’re going to hold these kids responsible and ask them to honor their end of the pre-draft process, you should hold all parties responsible for it, too.

 

Maybe I’m getting too worked up over this.

 

After all, the test means nothing.

 

Just ask the guy who nearly aced it.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

Link: http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/Morris-Claiborne-NFL-draft-LSU-Wonderlic-score-040312

 

 

Here is an article defending Claiborn... I happen to side with him on this. Poor kid, he seems really nice... so what if he didn't get a good grade, at least he tried...

 

I garentee he didn't try on that test. He was probably like a lot of my students and said to himself "When am I ever going to need this in the real world (ie football)" signed his name and laid back. Remember you get 4 for just signing your name. You have to be the unluckiest person in the world to randomly circle answers and not get a few of them right.

[calfoxwc]

Great arrticle ! Some learning disabilities require a test be read to the test taker. They don't assimilate the information by reading.

 

But hearing it be read, they get it just fine. It's just one of those quirks.

 

He's a cb, it won't affect his draft status. I'd draft him in a New York second if he's the guy for my team....

 

 

[hoorta]

Well, if the guy has a learning disability, that puts an entirely different spin on the score. He could be dyslexic. Who knows? And agreed, whoever leaked the score should be fired if he works for the NFL.

[Tour2ma]

Here's a better test than the Wonderlic...

 

How much of the article Po-G posted do you need to copy to make a comment on it?

 

 

MC's learning disability does change things... Back to near the top of my board he goes.

 

And the NFL should find out who leaked the score.

[brownfish]

Ben Rothlisberger