A look at how Saints measure draft prospects' ability to process information and learn

By Nick Underhill

If you’re a prospect hoping to break into the NFL and meet with the Saints ahead of the draft, chances are you’re going to end up staring into a computer screen and will be asked to recognize how a series of balls move around a screen.
It might start out with 10 white and two red balls moving around the screen. At a certain point, the red ones will disappear, and it is the test subject’s job to say where they were on the screen when it happened. Then it will move on to three red balls, then four, and so on.

“And we record a score for that. We do a series of these that help us get a gauge as to how quickly someone processes information,” coach Sean Payton told The Advocate. “Where does it weigh? It’s still about the talent. It’s still about the traits — height, weight, speed, size. We’re still using a typing system. It gives us an additional bit of information with regards to other things — vision, learning elements. We’re really back to learning.”

NFL teams have been putting players through different types of mental tests for years. The Giants had one when Payton was with the team in 1999 that took about 45 minutes to complete. New Orleans located a more efficient way to go about the process two years ago when they came across this new method.

Full Story - The Advocate