Bryce Young is not the biggest quarterback prospect of the 2023 NFL Draft. He doesn't have the strongest arm, nor is he considered the best pure passer.
But one metric Young has in spades over the rest of the 2023 draft class: cognitive speed, as determined by the S2 Cognition test. It's one of the newer tools used in the NFL to help teams evaluate potential draft prospects, one that purportedly determines athletes' split-second information processing and decision-making ability.
Young's S2 score is among the reasons why he is predicted to go No. 1 overall in the 2023 NFL Draft to the Panthers, who are one of 15 teams to use it. A pair of Vanderbilt neuroscientists — Brandon Ally and Scott Wylie — are behind the test, which they claim is predictive of NFL success, especially among quarterbacks.
“Some positions require more visual processing or cognitive processing than others,” Ally told The Athletic recently. “As an example, the quarterback position is heavily dependent on reading what the defense is doing and rapidly making decisions based on those reads.”
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But can it predict how well Young will transition to the NFL? Ally believes the results speak for themselves so far. With that, The Sporting News breaks down what the S2 Cognition test is, how it purports to predict NFL success among QBs and how Young's score compares with his draft class:
What is S2 in the NFL?
S2 began testing in 2015 and, unlike the now-passe Wonderlic, does not measure general intelligence. It instead determines the speed at which players can process split-second information, and how fast they can act on it.
(The Athletic also notes that the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement limits where the test can be administered. It reportedly is not permitted among current NFL players or the NFL combine. So players generally take it at college all-star games such as the Senior Bowl or East-West Shrine Game; pro days; and top-30 visits.)
S2 claims to be the only sports evaluation tool to measure an athlete's cognitive abilities "down to a millisecond level." All tests take place on a specialized gaming laptop and response pad that can record reactions in two milliseconds.
Per S2's website:
S2 Cognition helps athletes better understand why they excel and struggle in certain areas of their game by revealing how their brain is wired to perform. The S2 Eval is the only sports evaluation that scientifically measures an athlete’s game-speed cognitive abilities down to a millisecond level — and provides tailored, on-field drills designed by top-level coaches to measurably improve performance.
The Athletic reports the S2 evaluation takes 40 to 45 minutes to complete and consists of nine different tests, all of which measure varying aspects of processing speed. Per S2's site, five of the mental "instincts" it tests for include:
- Perception Speed
- Visual Search Efficiency
- Trajectory Prediction
- Impulse Control
- Improvisation
Ally told The Athletic the three most important scores for quarterbacks in the test are tracking multiple objects; decision complexity; and improvisation. The scores for those three tasks, as well as the remaining six tests, are graded separately. They're then plugged into a formula to determine a player's overall score.
“It’s like the decathlon. You don’t have to win a single event, but you can actually win the decathlon,” Ally told The Athletic. “It looks at the pattern of scores based on how others did on those nine tasks.”
Per a February breakdown from The Athletic's Matt Barrows, one such test consists of a series of diamonds flashing on a screen for 16 milliseconds (the average human blinks in about 100 to 150 milliseconds). Test-takers must indicate which point of the diamond is missing by using one of the left, right, up or down keys.
Another test aims to see how many objects a test-taker can keep track of at the same time, while another asks them to locate one of 22 figures on the screen (such as a red triangle embedded in other red-hued shapes).
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Bryce Young S2 score
Generally speaking, players' S2 scores — privileged information owned by teams that have contracts with the company — are not publicly revealed. That said, Albert Breer of the MMQB leaked Young's score on April 13: 98, out of a perfect 99.
Since I've been asked, Alabama QB Bryce Young scored a 98 on the S2 cognitive test, per sources. That's a HUGE number—and one his teammate, Tide TE Cameron Latu, matched.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) April 13, 2023
I mentioned Burrow, Fields and Allen (all in the 90s) as high scorers. Young's score edged out all of them. https://t.co/k3D6JPLfMG
The Athletic's Joseph Person confirmed that score in April, adding that Kentucky's Will Levis — the only other player whose score was made public at the time — scored a 93. Bob McGinn of GoLongTD.com corroborated those reports with more leaked scores on Friday.
Young's score seems to indicate he can easily make the mental transition to the NFL — "We consider anything above the 80th percentile to be elite,” Ally told The Athletic — but how does his score compare to other notable quarterbacks in this year's class?
According to McGinn's report, here's how other 2023 quarterback prospects scored on the S2 in terms of percentiles, not actual scores.
MORE: Why latest NFL odds suggest Texans will pass on C.J. Stroud at No. 2
C.J. Stroud S2 score
- 18th percentile
Tanner McKee S2 score
- 99th percentile, per Mike Garafolo
Jake Haener S2 score
- 96th percentile
Will Levis S2 score
- 93rd percentile
Jaren Hall S2 score
- 93rd percentile
Clayton Tune S2 score
- 84th percentile
Anthony Richardson S2 score
- 79 percentile
Hendon Hooker S2 score
- 46th percentile
Again, those percentiles are unconfirmed reports. Ally told Pro Football Focus recently that any leaked scores should be taken with a grain of salt.
MORE: NFL Draft prospects 2023: Ranking the top 10 quarterbacks
S2 scores from active NFL quarterbacks
Ally told The Athletic his company last year studied S2 tests given to 117 quarterbacks through the 2022 NFL Draft. The average score among quarterbacks was in the 68th percentile, compared to the 50th percentile across all other positions.
Ally said Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow scored in the 97th percentile. Second-year 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy — who led San Francisco to the NFC championship game after taking over midway through the season — reportedly scored in the "mid-90s." The same goes for the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and the Bills’ Josh Allen.
Moreover, Ally told The Athletic in February that S2 limited test results to 27 starting quarterbacks from the 2021 season onward. Of that group, 13 had a career passer rating over 90. Their average S2 score was in the 91st percentile. The remaining 14, who each had career passer ratings less than 90, averaged a score in the 51st percentile, with scores ranging from 8 to 90.
Ally also told The Athletic that S2 scores among quarterbacks in the 2023 draft class were considerably better than last year's, when only two signal-callers — Purdy and another, unnamed prospect — scored in the 90s. Kenny Pickett was the lone quarterback taken in the first round of the 2022 draft.
“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.”
Even among that elite group, Young stands above the rest.
