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Well for whatever reason it did make sense to Stroud and apparently to the Texans. We don’t know the state of mind Stroud was in when he took the test.
There was some speculation even from within S2 about Stroud's test result. Though S2 would not publicly comment on Stroud's actual result, The Athletic did report S2 had been flagged when Stroud's test score came in and teams were told the score was "unreliable."
“From my understanding, the S2 people had a lot of questions when his score came back in,” one executive told The Athletic. “It got leaked by a club, and they wanted to know why.”
Why "unreliable"? Several executives told The Athletic there was a belief Stroud did not put full effort into the test. There were several factors that could have led to that belief: He might have taken it at the end of a long day; he might not have been a great test-taker; he might have been nervous; he might have just not felt like it.
“It made us all say, ‘Wait a minute, what?’ You watch his tape, and his tape is awesome. He’s processing. He’s playing fast. He’s making good decisions. Maybe this is just an anomaly? Maybe he didn’t try?" an executive told The Athletic. “When it’s an outlier like this, you ask yourself, when and where did he take it? Was it his fourth test that day and he’d just had enough? Then you call the agent and say, ‘Hey, he scored really low on this. Can we get him to take it again?'”
For his part, Stroud had told The Athletic last fall that there are "some things I apply myself to, some things I don't." He explained he did well in school, but described himself as "lazy" in the classroom and that he would "get what I could get so I could play football." He had nothing against S2 for the leak.
What is S2 in the NFL? Explaining the C.J. Stroud controversy driving doubt over 2024 draft cognition test | Sporting News
The cognition test, which is administered at the annual scouting combine, placed Stroud's draft stock in question. The immediate success of the Texans' rookie QB flipped the uncertainty onto the test itself.
While Ally wouldn’t directly address Stroud’s score, Torre revealed that a source involved in the testing noted that Stroud’s score was flagged with the designation “QUESTIONABLE DATA” atop his results. Furthermore, 10-20 players get flagged like this on average each year, either because they didn’t try, didn’t care, or were too tired to truly take the at their normal abilities.
