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Size matters: Why NFL teams are obsessed with quarterbacks' handspans

<span>Photograph: David J Phillip/AP</span>
Photograph: David J Phillip/AP

Every year, the league’s executives go doolally over the size, or lack thereof, of a quarterback’s hands. This year, the presumptive No1 overall pick, Joe Burrow, is the man in the firing line. Burrow’s hands measured in at 9in, small by NFL quarterback standards.

“Considering retirement after I was informed the football will be slipping out of my tiny hands,” Burrow tweeted after the news leaked on Monday. “Please keep me in your thoughts.”

Why do people care about Joe Burrow’s hands?

Burrow is expected to be the No1 overall pick in the upcoming NFL Draft. Burrow marshaled one of the most sophisticated passing games in recent college football history, breaking pretty much every single individual passing record while leading LSU to a national championship. Still: the NFL seemingly has a higher bar for entry than the Oval office.

Why does hand size matter to a quarterback?

The belief is that quarterbacks with small hands struggle to grip the ball, particularly in cold and wet weather (Cincinnati, where Burrow is almost certain to play, has an average low in December of 26F (-3C)). There is a belief among some of the league’s smartest executives that hand size is more important than a quarterback’s height, which is often listed as a knock on shorter quarterback prospects such as Drew Brees and Russell Wilson when they came out of college.

Related: The NFL combine: an ethically dubious meat market wrapped in junk science

That’s because, unlike hand size, quarterbacks can develop tools to work around their lack of height. Teams shift the so-called “launch point” to give a quarterback a better vantage. Naturally, because they’ve been doing it their whole lives, shorter quarterbacks shuffle and move in the pocket to find the best possible sightlines.

Ordinarily, hand size and height go, pardon the pun, hand in hand. Taller humans have bigger hands, naturally. There is also a theory among some of the scouting old-guard that a better grip allows a player to get more revolutions on the ball, allowing the ball to cut through the air in windy environments.

Is there any evidence it matters?

A few of the league’s better sub-6ft quarterbacks have giant hands compared to the national average for someone their size. Brees is typically listed at around 6ft and yet has 10.25in hands, while Wilson (5ft 11in) also has 10.25in hands. Both have larger hands than either Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck (6ft 5in and 6ft 4in respectively), widely considered as the best pro prospects of the past 25 years and the prototype for what general managers are looking for.

Patrick Mahomes, the best quarterback in the league, has hands that come in at 9.25in, which may be the best evidence that this is all hokum. No player in the league can match his arm strength, his ability to throw off-platform and under pressure, and to alter his arm angles, dropping his arm and delivering the ball sideways whenever the pocket becomes too cluttered. “My small hands are doing alright so far,” Mahomes, the reigning Super Bowl MVP wrote in response to Burrow this week. “I believe in ya.”

Alongside Mahomes and Burrow, Aaron Rodgers, Tony Romo, and Michael Vick were measured as having hands under 10in. Yet all of them were noted for their leap-out-your-seat arm strength. Romo and Vick had fumble issues (Romo’s in critical moments; Vick in volume) but that was as much due to their freelancing style as their hands. Rodgers who plays in Green Bay, where temperatures often tumble well below freezing, has fumbled the ball 81 times in 181 games, an average of 0.4 per game, the same rate as Tom Brady and only slightly ahead of Manning, who played the vast majority of his career indoors.

Is hand size the only odd measurement NFL scouts look at?

Most of the measurements that take place at the combine are nonsense. What matters: a player’s tape and his mentality. Will he develop? How would he fit in our scheme? Does he know football? Does he love football?

There are, however, some metrics that have value. Most teams have athletic baseline measurements for every position group. That leads to certain players slipping through the cracks, but on the whole, it makes sense. Wide receivers, for example, will obviously struggle if they don’t have some modicum of speed.

The most useless measurement comes from the Wonderlic, a test doled out by teams as a measure of intelligence since the 1970s. The test has come under repeated fire, particularly when what is supposed to be a private score is leaked by a team, typically painting a player as dumb, and often, ironically, to knock the player’s draft stock, allowing that team a chance to draft the player with a lower pick.

The test is useless. Players are given 12 minutes to answer 50 questions. Some of the highest-scoring QBs in combine history have been some of the league’s worst quarterbacks – Greg McElroy, Ryan Nassib, Sean Mannion – while those who have done average-to-poorly on the score have gone on to be era-defining talents: Peyton Manning (28), Cam Newton (21), Lamar Jackson (13).

The NFL implemented a further psychological evaluation in 2013, which may have some merit. It’s a further 60-minute test, which works in concert with the Wonderlic, but cannot be prepared for. The test measures a wide range of competencies, including learning styles, motivation, decision-making skills, responding to pressure or unexpected stimuli, and core intellect. And the questions are randomized, making it more representative of a player’s ability to think on the fly.

The only test that really matters this week: the urine test. A player’s medical is the most important information a team can gather, but the results are, obviously, out of the athlete’s hands. Each prospective player, however, must also pass a drug test, designed to identify any substances deemed illegal by the NFL including marijuana, cocaine and performance-enhancing drugs.

Evaluators use the urine test as more of an intellect test than the Wonderlic. Players know it’s coming. They have months to prepare – if indeed they need to do any preparation to pass. Every year, multiple players still fail. Teams then spend the months between the combine and the draft trying to figure out if the player failed because they have a substance abuse issue or because they were too dumb to refuse a joint at a party with a drugs test looming.