Processing speed is a vital, hard-to-measure skill for both elite athletes and patients.

The difficulty of quantifying processing speed is why the NFL still relies on years of observation, or "tape."

Future performance of NFL players often rides on intangible skills that neuropsychologists measure.

Fast processing might help athletes “see” the future plays and movements of their opponents.

Like many of my patients, I have always dreamed of being a professional athlete. That dream was never realistic for me, and many decades into my life, any athletic feat is a cause for celebration.

But I am still an avid sports fan, and I am particularly interested in understanding what makes for a great player. And one of my favorite events is the NFL draft, where evaluations of future performance often ride on intangible skills that neuropsychologists measure in our work.

Obviously, a basic requirement is the physical component of sports. You will never be an NFL quarterback without being able to throw a football a long way, accurately, with pace. You will never play in the NBA without speed, quickness, and the ability to shoot.

We are now in the season of the NFL Draft. The NBA Draft follows at the end of June. I listen to dozens of podcasts about these drafts, and I keep noticing that the skill scouts praise in their best prospects is the one that matters just as much for my patients, whether they become recreational, high school, college, or professional athletes, or never play at all.

That skill is processing.

What we actually measure in the office

One way I explain processing speed to parents is by describing how we take in information from the outside, bring it into our brains, process it there, and then produce an output.

What our tests measure most readily is the speed of that process. But there is some mystery about what actually goes on inside the brain between input and output.

As neuropsychologists, we often measure the speed of doing something rather than how long it takes the brain to process and make sense of information. Our instruments tap visual scanning, clerical motor speed, reaction time, and the ability to balance speed with accuracy. All of that is useful. But it does not capture what draft analysts mean when they talk about a player's mind.

Speed of doing versus speed of processing

Speed of doing is how fast your finger hits the button or your pencil moves. It is measurable and important.

Speed of processing is different. In the case of an NFL quarterback, it includes recognizing what is occurring beforehand, looking at a field of changing objects, reading a defensive formation, and finding the pattern. It involves anticipating where a receiver will be open microseconds later. It involves holding several possibilities in mind and updating them rapidly as new information arrives.

Other factors sit alongside this: Intuition, which may be a capacity to pick up on cues most observers miss; film study, which makes recognition automatic; and confidence in decisions, which is the willingness to make a call fast and live with it rather than puzzle over it.

Why scouts end up watching tape

I do not want to call any of this unmeasurable. But these skills are far more difficult to discern than arm strength or 40-yard-dash time, whether NFL teams are trying to draft the next great quarterback, linebacker, or safety.

Consider Caleb Downs, the Ohio State safety who was drafted eleventh in the recent draft. Mel Kiper Jr., known as the NFL Draft Guru, wrote that Downs “diagnoses quickly thanks to excellent pre-snap instincts,” which lets him play faster than his timed speed suggests. Todd McShay of The Ringer compared him to Ed Reed, noting that Reed was the best ever at knowing what was about to happen before it happened. Downs' processing, in McShay's view, can almost allow him to see the future.

The NFL runs prospects through a rigmarole of tests: tracking data, computer vision, combined drills, and psychological evaluations. Sophisticated tools can now measure in-game speed and certain reaction times. But we still cannot peer inside the brain to watch a decision form. Which is why, in the end, the best scouts fall back on the same thing I do in my office: watching what the person has done over many years.

Here is an interesting twist for parents. The same technology that makes screen time a concern for many of the kids I see, including fast-moving video games, high-stimulation apps, and media that reward split-second decisions, is also the technology now being used to train and evaluate elite processors.

Five strategies for kids from the quarterback playbook

If processing is hard to see, it is also hard to train through ordinary means. Here is where we can borrow from athletes. Here are five strategies neurodivergent students can take from how quarterbacks prepare:

Master a topic the way a quarterback studies film. Great NFL quarterbacks spend hundreds of hours watching the defense they are about to face. When something happens on the field, they have already seen it. A student who knows the content cold does not have to think about it on the test. They can just act.

Build systematic executive functioning. A quarterback does not improvise his walk to the line of scrimmage. He has a sequence. Students who apply planning, organizing, and self-monitoring consistently free up mental space for the actual thinking.

Practice under real-time pressure. Quarterbacks practice against a clock because the game is against a clock. A timer on homework or flash cards with a stopwatch can help students access the speed of processing that is not engaged in untimed work. A sports video game like Madden can do this, too. Playing quarterback, a kid has a few seconds to read the defense, pick a receiver, and throw before the rush arrives. That is the same pressured pattern recognition a real quarterback has to run.

Use technology to reduce friction. Quarterbacks study film on tablets and VR headsets. Kids with slow written output benefit enormously from typing and dictation. Certain video games that rely on rapid visual processing can also train pattern recognition.

Find a mentor. Rookie quarterbacks learn from veterans, not just by copying mechanics but by watching their thinking habits. Students can do the same. Pair them with someone who handles cognitive load well and let them borrow the template.

No one is measuring any of this precisely. But the NFL has built a multibillion-dollar industry around figuring out which twenty-two-year-olds have the mind for the game. We might borrow from what they have learned.

McShay, T. (Host). (2023–present). The McShay Show [Audio podcast].

Jr., M. K., & Authors, M. (2026, April 23). 2026 NFL Draft Big Board Rankings: Mel Kiper’s Top Prospects. ESPN. https://www.espn.com/nfl/draft2026/story/_/id/46573669/2026-nfl-draft-r…

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