tAthletic: LSU Football, Saints among top sports teams using “S2 Cognition” for advantage

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Get used to hearing about an athlete’s “S2 score.” Maybe less about the Wonderlic.

“It’s almost like cheating to me, to find this information out,” Jack Marucci, LSU’s director of athletic training, said of the data provided by S2 Cognition, started in 2016 by former Vanderbilt professors Brandon Ally and Scott Wylie.

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To the sharpest of the sharp. Someone like, say, Joe Burrow, who led LSU to the national championship and won the Heisman Trophy last season, went No. 1 overall to the Bengals and will lead them Sunday against the Tennessee Titans. Everyone knows about his arm, his athleticism, his actual “intangibles” such as leadership. But did you know his S2 score is ridiculous?

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In basic terms, Burrow’s brain processes information and operates his body exactly as a GM looking to invest in a franchise quarterback would hope. And that may be obvious to anyone who watches Burrow. But it’s not so simple with some players. The S2 site also compares two actual, unnamed NFL safeties, one of whom was drafted in the first round and one in the fourth.

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But however exactly S2 was involved in the 2017 Saints draft, it was involved — and Marshon Lattimore, Ryan Ramczyk, Marcus Williams and Alvin Kamara count as another testimonial

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We had 10 guys go in the third round or higher last year,” said Marucci, who is in his 24th season at LSU. “They’re all elite or close to elite mental processors. It’s not an accident.” And LSU was the first place to find that out.

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The first call, when S2 was still a part-time endeavor, went from Ally to Tommy Moffitt. Moffitt is LSU’s assistant AD for strength and conditioning, and he was Ally’s strength coach at Tennessee in the 1990s. Moffitt invited Ally and Wylie to come give a presentation on the testing to Les Miles’ football staff. Some, such as John Chavis, wanted nothing to do with it.

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But then you’ll have someone like Dave Aranda,” Ally said of the former LSU defensive coordinator who arrived there in 2016, “who is like ‘Oh dude, yeah, let’s sit down and have a conversation. Tell me more. Let’s talk the same language.’”

The key was Marucci. “I said, ‘Man, this is exactly what we need,’” Marucci said. “I was always obsessed with, ‘There’s got to be some way we can measure these guys, their football IQ, their ability to process.’

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LSU hasn’t just learned its players through the S2 testing. It has used drills to work on weaknesses, changed positions at times and employed receivers and pass rushers on the left or right side based on results.

Ed Orgeron, who replaced Miles in 2016, has embraced the data and its benefits. Marucci called it “a significant piece” in the program’s rise to last season’s national championship and record-tying supply of 14 players to the NFL Draft.

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