Every NFL Wonderlic Score on Record: The Highest, the Lowest, and What They Mean

Start with the fact that reframes every number below. No NFL Wonderlic score was ever officially released. Sports Illustrated said so plainly in 2011, scores "are not released by the league and are considered unofficial," and Roger Goodell's April 2012 memo to clubs, reported by Albert Breer, called them "strictly confidential for club use only." Every figure in circulation reached the public through a leak. This page ranks the highest and lowest reported Wonderlic test scores, attributes each one to a named outlet, flags which are disputed and which are simply unsourced, and converts the numbers into the percentile they would actually mean in a normal hiring process.

Quick takeaways

• The highest publicly known score is a perfect 50, reported for Cincinnati Bengals punter Pat McInally. Say "publicly known" rather than "the only," because scores were never released.
• The lowest widely reported score is a 4, attributed to cornerback Morris Claiborne in 2012 by Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, citing multiple league sources.
• Several famous numbers are wrong. Bob McGinn's initial 2020 figures put Justin Herbert at 25, Tua Tagovailoa at 13 and Jalen Hurts at 18. Albert Breer then reported the real scores: 39, 19 and 21. The wrong ones are the ones that still circulate.
• "Disputed" and "unsourced" are different things. Vince Young's 6 is disputed, because named people contested it on the record. Frank Gore's 6 is unsourced, because nobody has ever contested it and no outlet ever put its name on it.
• The NFL position-average table that gets republished everywhere traces to a book published in 1984. It is over forty years old and almost nobody says so.
• The average score is about 20 to 21, so most of the "low" NFL numbers people mock are closer to normal than the internet suggests.
• The NFL dropped the test before the 2022 Combine. Teams moved to S2 Cognition, and the leaks moved with them.

Why every number on this page is a leak

The Wonderlic at the Combine was 50 questions in 12 minutes, the same format Wonderlic still sells today. Results went to clubs, not to the public. So the entire archive of NFL Wonderlic test scores is a record of what reporters were told, not a record of what any league office published.

That matters for three reasons. Scores get garbled as they pass between people. Corrections almost never travel as far as the original. And a player has no way to confirm or deny a number he was never shown, which is exactly how Greg McElroy ended up publicly confirming a score he could not have known.

The tables below carry a Status column for that reason. "Multiply reported" means several named outlets agree. "Single named source" means one outlet put its name on it. "Corrected" means the circulating number is wrong and the corrected one is given. "Disputed" means someone contested it on the record. "Unsourced" means no named outlet, and no contest either.

The highest reported NFL Wonderlic scores

Player	Position	Draft year	Score	Reported by	Status
Pat McInally	Punter	1975	50	Andre Vergara, FOX Sports; Darren Rovell, ESPN; Harvard Magazine	Multiply reported
Mike Mamula	DE	1995	49	David M. Hale, ESPN	Single named source
Ryan Fitzpatrick	QB	2005	48	Washington Post; Harvard Magazine; NYJets.com	Multiply reported
Kevin Curtis	WR	2003	48	Doug Robinson, Deseret News	Single named source
Benjamin Watson	TE	2004	48	Hayden Bird, Boston.com	Single named source
Greg McElroy	QB	2011	43 (not the 48 that circulates)	Mike Florio, PFT; Chris Mortensen, ESPN	Corrected
Eli Manning	QB	2004	39	David Goldenberg, Mental Floss	Single named source
Justin Herbert	QB	2020	39 (not the 25 that circulates)	Albert Breer, SI	Corrected
Joe Thuney	G	2016	39	Matt Verderame, Sporting News	Single named source
Akili Smith	QB	1999	37 (retake)	Geoff Hobson, Cincinnati Enquirer	Single named source
Tony Romo	QB	2003	37	Sports Illustrated	Single named source
Christian Ponder	QB	2011	35	Chris Mortensen, ESPN	Single named source

McInally is the only publicly known perfect 50. He later retook the test at Wonderlic's own request and missed one. Fitzpatrick's 48 comes with the detail that survives best: NYJets.com reports he finished in nine minutes and left one question blank. The version where he scored a perfect 50 in nine minutes is myth, and Fitzpatrick has said so himself.

The lowest reported NFL Wonderlic scores

Player	Position	Draft year	Score	Reported by	Status
Morris Claiborne	CB	2012	4	Mike Florio, PFT, citing multiple league sources	Single named source
Vince Young	QB	2006	6 (SI lists 15)	Circulated widely; contested on the record	Disputed
Frank Gore	RB	2005	6	No named outlet	Unsourced
Jeff George	QB	1990	10	Sports Illustrated	Single named source
Dan Marino	QB	1983	15 (16 circulates via aggregators)	Sports Illustrated	Single named source
Jim Kelly	QB	1983	15	Sports Illustrated	Single named source
Steve McNair	QB	1995	15	Sports Illustrated	Single named source
Akili Smith	QB	1999	16 (first attempt)	Geoff Hobson, Cincinnati Enquirer	Single named source
Terry Bradshaw	QB	1970	16 (15 also circulates)	Sports Illustrated; Mental Floss differs	Disputed
Tua Tagovailoa	QB	2020	19 (not the 13 that circulates)	Albert Breer, SI	Corrected
Kyler Murray	QB	2019	20	Bob McGinn	Single named source
Jalen Hurts	QB	2020	21 (not the 18 that circulates)	Albert Breer, SI	Corrected

Three of these deserve their footnotes. Claiborne's 4 came with context from an LSU source who told ESPN, "Mo has a high football IQ. He just learns in a different way." Vince Young's 6 was called inaccurate by NFL spokesman Steve Alic and disputed on the record by Charley Casserly, and a 16 on a retake is widely repeated. Terry Bradshaw's number is better treated as folklore than data: there was no Scouting Combine in 1970, the sources disagree, Bradshaw has never addressed it, and his reputation traces to a 1979 insult from Hollywood Henderson rather than to any test.

Donovan McNabb belongs in this conversation without a number attached. Malcolm Gladwell, writing in The New Yorker in 2008, established that McNabb had the lowest Wonderlic of the five quarterbacks taken in the first round in 1999 and the best career of any of them. That is the more useful fact, and unlike the 14 that circulates, it has a byline.

Modern quarterback scores, for reference

Player	Draft year	Score	Reported by	Status
Patrick Mahomes	2017	24	Bob McGinn	Single named source
JaMarcus Russell	2007	24	John Lopez, Sports Illustrated	Single named source
Baker Mayfield	2018	25	Middlekauff leak via Bleacher Report	Single named source
Ryan Mallett	2011	26	Chris Mortensen, ESPN	Single named source
Peyton Manning	1998	28	David Goldenberg, Mental Floss	Single named source
Sam Darnold	2018	28	Middlekauff leak via Bleacher Report	Single named source
Josh Rosen	2018	29	Middlekauff leak via Bleacher Report	Single named source

Mahomes at 24 and Russell at 24 is the row that should end the argument about what these numbers predict. One is a multiple MVP. The other is one of the most cited draft busts in league history. Same score.

What an NFL Wonderlic score would mean in normal hiring

This is the conversion nobody publishes, and it is the only reason these numbers matter to anyone who is not a football fan. The Wonderlic is scored 0 to 50, one point per correct answer, no penalty for guessing.

Read the NFL numbers against that scale and most of them stop looking remarkable. A 24, the figure reported for Mahomes, sits in the 55th to 80th percentile band and would clear the published minimum for most professional roles. A 20 is the midpoint. Even a 16 is inside the ordinary range, not an outlier.

One caveat on the average itself, because it is misquoted constantly. The 20 to 21 figure traces to ESPN Page 2, Jeff Merron, in February 2002, and it describes the applicant pool, not the general population. Wonderlic's own current candidate FAQ goes further and says there is no universal good or average score at all, because the product it sells today no longer produces a single 0 to 50 number.

For the full band-by-band breakdown and the job-specific cutoffs employers actually set, see our Wonderlic score bands and cutoffs guide. For the IQ question, the honest version is in the Wonderlic to IQ conversion table: Wonderlic once advertised an "IQ equivalent" as a printed feature of its own score reports and now distinguishes the two, and the "score times 2 plus 60" formula that circulates has no named outlet behind it.

The position-average table that is forty years old

Search for NFL Wonderlic scores by position and you will find the same eleven figures on dozens of sites, presented as current data. They are reproduced accurately. The problem is the date.

Wikipedia's version cites exactly one reference for it: Paul Zimmerman's The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football, published by Simon and Schuster in 1984. The numbers predate the modern Combine by decades, and almost none of the sites republishing them say so. The position averages themselves are laid out in our NFL Wonderlic guide; read them as a snapshot of a 1980s league, not as a current benchmark.

Why the NFL dropped the Wonderlic, and what replaced it

The league stopped administering the test before the 2022 Combine. It was first reported on 5 January 2022 from a memo to clubs obtained by the Associated Press and carried the same day by Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports. The memo framed the change as part of a package of pre-draft reforms requiring that prospects be "afforded a respectful and professional NFL environment." The New York Times reported in March 2022 that the test "has been criticized for racial bias."

The league adopted no formal replacement. Individual teams moved to S2 Cognition, a 40 to 45 minute exam graded across nine separate segments. The leak pipeline moved with it. In April 2023, S2 percentiles for the top quarterback class leaked to The Athletic. S2 co-founder Brandon Ally then said the leaked list was partly wrong: "the list of scores that I have seen, two of those scores are not accurate."

Which is the whole story in one sentence. A new test, a new set of leaked numbers, and the same immediate correction that nobody will read. Darren Rovell of ESPN, who had published leaked Wonderlic scores himself, publicly recanted the practice in 2017 after taking the real test and scoring 26, arguing that readers lack the context to interpret the numbers and that players' careers get damaged by them.

For the fuller account of the league's exit and what the Combine does now, see our NFL Wonderlic guide.

FAQ

Who has the highest Wonderlic score in NFL history?

Pat McInally, a Harvard-educated punter drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in 1975, is the only player publicly known to have scored a perfect 50. Because the league never released scores, "publicly known" is the accurate phrasing rather than "the only."

What QB has the highest Wonderlic score?

Ryan Fitzpatrick at 48 is the highest reported for a quarterback, and NYJets.com reports he finished in nine minutes leaving one question blank. Greg McElroy's 43 and Eli Manning's and Justin Herbert's 39 follow.

What QB has the lowest Wonderlic score?

Vince Young's reported 6 is the lowest quarterback figure in circulation, but it is disputed rather than established: an NFL spokesman called it inaccurate, Charley Casserly contested it on the record, Sports Illustrated lists him at 15, and a 16 on a retake is widely repeated. Jeff George at 10, sourced to Sports Illustrated, is the lowest quarterback score with a clean single-source attribution.

What did Tom Brady score on the Wonderlic test?

The number that circulates is 33. It does not carry a named outlet in the sourced record, so treat it as unsourced rather than as fact. That is true of a surprising share of the scores attached to famous players.

What is a good Wonderlic test score?

For a normal job, roughly 20 is average and anything from 27 up clears most professional cutoffs. There is no universal pass mark, because employers set role-specific minimums. The full cutoff guide has the job-family numbers.

Are NFL Wonderlic scores official?

No. The league never released them, and Roger Goodell's 2012 memo classified them as strictly confidential for club use. Every published figure is a leak, which is why corrections like Justin Herbert's real 39 never catch up with the wrong number.

Does the NFL still use the Wonderlic?

No. The test was dropped before the 2022 Combine. Teams now use S2 Cognition, and its scores have already started leaking too.

Is the Wonderlic still used by regular employers?

Yes. It is still sold at the same 50 questions in 12 minutes format, now as part of Wonderlic Select, though the current product reports a job-fit score rather than the single 0 to 50 number the NFL leaks argue about. See how the test is formatted and scored.

Related on PrepClubs

• Wonderlic test and the NFL: why the league walked away
• Wonderlic score bands, percentiles, and cutoffs by role
• Wonderlic to IQ conversion, honestly explained
• Wonderlic test format and scoring
• What a cognitive aptitude test is and why companies use it

Your score is not a leak, it is a number you can move

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