At first glance, and the layman will only agree, the American footballer is rather to be classified in the thick brute category: musculature to make Tibo InShape green with envy, shoulder pads worthy of the finest CRS protections, tackles that make Sébastien Chabal look like a cute little chick… And we are not expecting the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, who are competing for the trophy Vince-Lombardi at the Super Bowl on the night of this Sunday to Monday, more tenderness.
Except that, under the helmet, hides a brain in turmoil, especially among the quarterbacks, the “playmakers” of each team. Behind their offensive line which protects them, the QBs propose a combination, guide their attack, analyze the positioning of the opposing defense, adapt under pressure, while remaining as calm as possible while hounds, with sharp teeth, rush to put them down.
“It’s a position that is very demanding, the most complete,” analyzes Jean-Philippe Dinglor, former coach of the France team. In addition to reading the defenses well, we must know all the patterns that the coaches present to play them, to know what all the other players must do. It takes a lot of work. » A lot of work, to the point of wondering if quarterback is not the position that requires the most intelligence in all sports combined.
A playbook of over 500 pages to learn
To thwart defensive systems, quarterbacks have a multitude of schemes, which they had to learn by heart, as explained in 20 Minutes Sage Rosenfels, former QB of the Miami Dolphins or the Houston Texans, 43 NFL games under his belt in the 2000s: “There are hundreds of passing patterns, different concepts, runs. I recently watched the playbook of the 2022 Los Angeles Rams, it was 501 pages, much like it was in my day. Teams start with their concepts, then adapt them depending on the opponent. It takes a lot of work to learn all the combinations. »
Each diagram, each combination has its own name. Each player thus knows the role he has to play, the trajectory he must take. If someone tells you “Tampa egg, Z-bagel, Vinnie troy, toilet pivot” or “run pack, three set, slam, deep x stop, U-lock rail”, do not call the fire brigade, there is no risk of stroke. These are two offensive combinations, among hundreds of others, of the Kansas City Chiefs, led by Patrick Mahomes, revealed in the Netflix series Quarterback.
Sequences of words that can take time to be ingested by the brain. Each QB therefore has his own technique to retain them. Kirk Cousins (Atlanta Falcons) records them on a dictaphone, before listening to them in his car on the way home. Marcus Mariota (Washington Commanders) gets help from his wife, to whom he repeats the combinations like a child recites his poetry to his parents before being questioned by his teacher.
Virtual reality and neurofeedback
“I don’t think it’s more difficult than chemistry,” laughs Sage Rosenfels. Because at the end of the day, we’re just football players. But the quarterback must learn everything, understand and make split-second decisions. It is one of the positions that requires the most mental preparation in all sports. Being a quarterback probably has more mental challenges than physical challenges. Without a deep understanding of the puzzle, you will have no chance of success. »
To maximize his chances of having bandwidth, Kirk Cousins mapped his brain at the start of his career and has been doing neurofeedback for about ten years, an element that helps train the brain to exploit it fully and keep it alert. In the series All or nothingon Amazon, which follows the Arizona Cardinals, we see all the work shared by the QBs where they review all the actions with a virtual reality headset and look back on the decisions they had made to find out if they had made the right choice.
« The quarterback always thinks, at all times, continues Sage Rosenfels. There were matches, during which I did not play, where I ended up completely mentally washed out, my mind was only thinking, I was thinking about the preparation of each action. And during the action, I’m sure I was thinking exactly like the starting QB. »
Intelligence tests?
As with assessing speed, power or skills, NFL franchises also administer cognitive tests to players, and not just quarterbacks. The S2 Cognition, which studies nine cognitive functions to measure how quickly and accurately athletes process information, was a recent successor to the Wonderlic test, launched in the 1970s, which measured a player’s general intelligence.
“You don’t have to be a genius to play football, but S2 Cognition measures a bit of how your brain can anticipate and react,” says Sage Rosenfels. Some of the best quarterbacks of all time haven’t performed well on these tests, like Dan Marino, but QBs are usually the best. » For those who have poor results, their future in the NFL may be dotted.
Very promising quarterback at university, CJ Stroud IV ended up with the dunce cap after passing S2 Cognition. Enough to be labeled as an “idiot” player before the 2023 draft and not be selected first position. “I am a football player, I am not a participant in S2,” the young man justified himself on CBS. I don’t think you can play Ohio State and not be smart. I have an excellent memory when it comes to football. I feel like there are different ways to be a genius. »
Finally drafted second by the Houston Texans, Stroud still managed to find a good place in the NFL. And perhaps caused a small revolution. THE New York Times reports that the Athletes First agency, one of the most influential in American football, informed NFL teams that its clients would no longer participate in any cognitive examinations.
