Harvard grad Ryan Fitzpatrick, NFC offensive player of the week, demonstrates that Ivy League grads, brainiacs, can play in the NFL

… an IQ of 150

When a quarterback in the NFL compiles a passer rating of 156.2, people are impressed. When that passer leads his team to an upset of a very good team, they are impressed even more. When that QB completes 21 of 28 passes for 417 yards and four TDs, with no interceptions, and run for 36 yards on 12 carries … well, that is impressive.

However, what impressed me even more than that was that Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was the NFL Offensive Player of the Week for the Bucs 48-40 victory over New Orleans, is a graduate of Harvard. So, not only is the 35-year-old a pretty good passer, he is bright, a brainiac.

Actually, Fitzpatrick has been around for a while, starting in 2005 with the St. Louis Rams, then the Bengals, the Bills, the Texans, the Jets, and now Tampa Bay — seven teams.

The journeyman has thrown for 27,408 yards entering the season, completing almost 60 percent of his passes. However, with Jameis Winston suspended for the first three Tampa Bay games, Fitzpatrick has become a starter again.

The 48 points tied the team’s single-game record, and its 529 yards of offense were second in history.

However, he is demonstrating that an Ivy League player with a high IQ can play professional football.

Harvard

When he entered Harvard, where he majored in Economics, Fitzpatrick had compiled 1,580 points out of 1,600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). He was the Ivy League MVP in 2004 and had rushed and passed for more than 1,000 yards, according to a Sporting News analysis in 2010 that ranked him as the fifth smartest athlete on a professional team.

After football, he said that he might enter the field of finance, maybe go the Wall Street route. For now, however, he is focused on compiling numbers for the Bucs that may enable him to keep this job.

But, how smart is this guy?

Wonderlic Score

In 2011, the Washington Post wrote a story about Fitzpatrick to try and determine his intelligence. “Buffalo Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick sports the scruffy beard of an outdoorsman, the size and strength of some running backs and the intelligence quotient of your average nuclear physicist … Yet the result for which he is best known is the 48 he scored on the Wonderlic Cognitive Ability Test shortly before he was drafted in 2005. That number puts him in closer intellectual company with Stephen Hawking than some of his teammates —and probably his coaches. Research indicates that it corresponds to an IQ of about 150.”


An IQ of 150, close to the late Stephen Hawking? What in the world is he doing in the NFL? 

The only other higher score by an NFL player on the Wonderlic test was also compiled by a Harvard dude, Pat McInally of the Cincinnati Bengals in 1975.

The NFL is the only league to test intelligence. As the Post reported, “For three decades, the Wonderlic has been as integral to the NFL’s examination of draftees as the bench press and the 40-yard dash. The NFL is the only one of the major U.S. sports to give prospects an intelligence test.” It reported that a former GM of the Redskins, Charley Casserly, said this about the test, “It’s of value, because it’s something everyone takes. You got a history on it. It gives you a red light, which is good to have, and then you work from the red light.”

Probably the smartest guy in the NFL

So, if the NFL has anyone brighter than this Irish-American, they have not identified him. And, this is great to show that outstanding students can become high-level performing athletes.






I just love reading about intelligent athletes, so I love his story. Hope you do, too.