NFL teams have long struggled to predict which college quarterbacks will become stars, and the failures are costly. Stephen Dubner talks to a scout, a sports psychologist, a data entrepreneur, and Hall of Famer Kurt Warner — who defied every evaluation — about why the position is uniquely hard to project and whether cognitive testing and analytics can improve the odds.
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Highlights
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The Quarterback Prediction Problem00:00:00
NFL teams have historically failed to accurately predict which college quarterbacks will thrive in the professional game, with high draft picks often not panning out.
Sports psychologist Scott Goldman argues that traditional physical and film-based scouting overlooks the mental processing demands that separate elite quarterbacks.
Stephen Smith of Kitman Labs describes how data analytics and machine learning models are being used to complement human scouting by identifying patterns that the eye might miss.
Kurt Warner: The Ultimate Scouting Anomaly00:00:00
Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner’s journey — from undrafted free agent to two-time MVP — illustrates the colossal blind spots in traditional quarterback evaluation.