NFL Draft Visits: Shrinks Puzzles personality Tests & Standing Out On Film

TL;DR

NFL teams use personality tests, puzzle games, and film review to assess prospects, with effort and competitiveness being the top separating factors.

Key Points

• 1.Mike Shanahan used a shrink and physical puzzle games to evaluate prospects. During a pre-draft visit, a psychologist timed players on ring-stacking and problem-solving games, scoring them without explanation — designed to measure how quickly players figure things out independently.
• 2.The Wonderlic is considered less useful than pattern-recognition tests. One speaker admits finishing only 26 of 50 Wonderlic questions due to slow reading, but found the combine's shape/pattern sequence book far more applicable to football intelligence like spatial awareness.
• 3.Pickleball and casual games reveal competitiveness better than formal interviews. One host proposed bringing top-30 draft prospects to a pickleball court, arguing that effort and coordination in low-stakes games correlates directly with performance — backed by his own offseason observations.
• 4.Nick Sirianni reportedly uses rock paper scissors as a similar competitiveness gauge. Both hosts agreed the underlying principle — that you can spot competitive desire in any game — holds true, even if rock paper scissors seems less reliable than other methods.
• 5.On film, coaches want to see love for the game, route artistry, and relentless effort. Finishing every play to the echo of the whistle is the guaranteed way to stand out in training camp, as it's the one attribute fully within a player's control regardless of skill level.