CJ Stroud before the draft came out of Ohio State and scored 18 out of 100 on the S2 cognition test which is basically an exam that NFL teams use to measure how fast a quarterback processes information. Bryce Young who was picked 1 pick ahead of him scored a 98 out of 100. Stroud’s score was the lowest score of any QB coming out of that draft class. And yesterday he got mocked for a warmup that went viral with his eyes. He got mocked for his cognition test and now the internet is trolling him for working on one of the most important parts of being a QB… the brain. But what is he actually doing?
The drill is called “saccades” and there is real sports science and data behind it. After looking this up and trying to keep it concise and easy to understand here is what I found. A saccade is the fast, involuntary jump your eyes make when they snap from one target to another, which is exactly what a quarterback's eyes do on every dropback as he moves from his first read to his second to his checkdown in under three seconds. Stroud holds his thumbs out and flicks his eyes between them, horizontally and then vertically, training those jumps to be faster and more controlled. It’s part of the same screening doctors use to check for a concussion, and there are vision training companies that now sell a version of this to QBs to speed up how fast they can process a defense pre snap.
But what makes this all funny is three years ago the sports world decided Stroud’s processing was a weakness. Now he’s putting in the work and has turned into a meme. Now, I do understand the video is pretty funny but got to give Stroud some credit here because when he came out of Ohio State he dismissed his test score as well.
Stroud is coming off a rough season that ended with four interceptions in a playoff loss to New England, and he has plenty to prove in 2026. But a QB quietly drilling the one skill that decides games, the speed of what happens in his brain, is the last thing anyone should be clowning, plus the one thing that cost Stroud in the playoffs was processing and decision making. Glad to see him putting in the work.
Shadow people. They’re not low vibrational energies. I usually see them in Airbnb’s/hotels/medical offices now. I used to see them a lot more, not so much now.