What is Patrick Mahomes’ IQ?
“Football IQ” is the phrase analysts reach for; the only test score on his record is a Wonderlic 24 from the 2017 combine — exactly the average for an NFL quarterback, and no site converts it into an IQ number.
No published IQ test result exists for Patrick Mahomes, and unlike Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady, no site prints an actual IQ figure for him. What is documented is a reported Wonderlic score of 24 out of 50 from the 2017 draft process — matching the reported average for NFL quarterbacks — plus an NCAA total-offense record and three Super Bowl rings, a record that supports an estimated IQ of about 93–108.
Patrick Mahomes’ estimated IQ
- A reported Wonderlic score of 24 out of 50 from the 2017 draft process, repeated by NBC Sports, Wikipedia’s own infobox, Test-Guide.com and several Wonderlic-focused sites with no dispute anywhere; Test-Guide.com puts the average score for the quarterback position at 24 as well, so the reported number matches the position average rather than exceeding it.
- An NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision single-game record of 819 total yards (734 passing) against Oklahoma on October 22, 2016, in a season in which he led the nation in passing yards (5,052), total offense (5,312) and touchdowns (53), won the Sammy Baugh Trophy as the nation’s top college passer, and was named second-team All-Big 12 and a College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-America second-teamer.
- Two NFL Most Valuable Player awards (2018, 2022) and three Super Bowl championships with three Super Bowl MVP awards (Super Bowl LIV, LVII, LVIII) as the Kansas City Chiefs’ starting quarterback.
- Selection by the Detroit Tigers in the 37th round of the 2014 MLB draft out of high school, evidence of two-sport ability he did not pursue, choosing Texas Tech football instead.
The Wonderlic is a 12-minute, 50-question employment test, not an IQ test, and the NFL does not release scores officially — Mahomes’s reported 24 comes from beat-writer reporting, not a league release. It is also, on its own terms, unremarkable: it equals the reported average for NFL quarterbacks and placed him eighth of the eleven quarterbacks drafted in 2017. Extending this site’s Rodgers and Brady rule of thumb to a 24 gives a ceiling near 108, which is why the band here is wide and low rather than lifted to match his on-field reputation: a 2024 poll of his fellow quarterbacks gave him one vote out of thirty-eight for the league’s smartest passer, so “football IQ” praise and the one real test score both argue against a high number, not for one.
- Born
- September 17, 1995, Tyler, Texas
- Education
- Whitehouse High School, Whitehouse, Texas; Texas Tech University, 2014–2016 (marketing; left early for the NFL draft)
- Field
- American football (quarterback): Kansas City Chiefs, 2017–present
- Draft
- 2017 NFL Draft, first round, 10th overall (Kansas City traded up with the Buffalo Bills)
- Honors
- Two-time NFL MVP (2018, 2022); three-time Super Bowl champion and MVP (LIV, LVII, LVIII); Sammy Baugh Trophy (2016)
- Tests on record
- Wonderlic 24 of 50 (reported from the 2017 draft process, matching the reported NFL quarterback average; not officially released); no IQ test
- Status (September 28, 2026)
- Age 31; Chiefs starting quarterback in his 10th season, 3–0 to start 2026
- Circulating IQ figure
- None found; the only reported test score is the Wonderlic 24
What an IQ of 93–108 actually means
Set the claim aside for a moment. If someone genuinely scored in this range, here is what that would represent.
| Score range | Classification | Share of people | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 85 – 114 | Average | ~68% | The range most people fall into. |
| 115 – 129 | Above average | ~13.6% | Roughly one person in seven. |
| 130 – 144 | Gifted | ~2% | The threshold most high-IQ societies use. |
| Above 144 | Highly gifted | ~0.1% | Figures above this range are extrapolated from the curve rather than measured. |
Percentages are approximate and describe a normal distribution. The same number means different things on tests with different standard deviations.
Thirty questions gives you a measured position on this exact scale — your score, your percentile and the ability breakdown behind it.
Find out in 30 minutes →Who Patrick Mahomes is
Patrick Mahomes was born on September 17, 1995, in Tyler, Texas, the son of Pat Mahomes, a former Major League Baseball pitcher. He attended Whitehouse High School in Whitehouse, Texas, where he passed for 4,619 yards and 50 touchdowns and ran for 948 yards and 15 more as a senior, while also pitching a 16-strikeout no-hitter for the baseball team. The Detroit Tigers picked him in the 37th round of the 2014 MLB draft, but he did not sign, choosing instead to play football at Texas Tech University.
At Texas Tech, where he majored in marketing, Mahomes started for three seasons from 2014 to 2016. His breakout came in 2016: he led the nation in passing yards (5,052), total offense (5,312) and touchdowns (53), and on October 22, in a 66–59 loss to Oklahoma, he passed for 734 yards and ran for more, finishing with 819 yards of total offense on 100 plays, an NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision single-game record, in a game that produced seven national records in total. For the season he won the Sammy Baugh Trophy as the nation’s top college passer, was named second-team All-Big 12, and made the College Sports Information Directors of America’s Academic All-America second team, before forgoing his final season of eligibility for the 2017 NFL draft.
Kansas City traded up with the Buffalo Bills to select Mahomes tenth overall in the 2017 NFL draft, and his reported Wonderlic score from that pre-draft process was 24. He became the Chiefs’ full-time starter in 2018 and was named NFL Most Valuable Player that season, then again in 2022. Kansas City won Super Bowl LIV, Super Bowl LVII and Super Bowl LVIII with Mahomes at quarterback, and he was named Super Bowl MVP each time, giving him three championships and three Super Bowl MVP awards.
As of September 28, 2026, Mahomes, 31, remains the Chiefs’ starting quarterback in his tenth NFL season. Kansas City opened the season 3–0, including a 24–10 win over the Miami Dolphins on September 27, 2026, in which Mahomes completed 20 of 24 passes for 246 yards and two touchdowns, and the team heads into Week 4 on the road.
By Elora Mercer, Celebrity Research WriterFigures checked by Leon Falkner, Data & Research AnalystReviewed by Aarav Vardhan, Editor-in-Chief · Last reviewed August 2026
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Patrick Mahomes: the documented record
The estimate above rests on this record. Every entry here is a matter of public fact, which is more than can be said for the number itself.
- 1995Born September 17 in Tyler, Texas, the son of former MLB pitcher Pat Mahomes.
- 2014Graduates Whitehouse High School; the Detroit Tigers draft him in the 37th round of the MLB draft, but he enrolls at Texas Tech instead.
- 2016Leads the nation in passing yards, total offense and touchdowns; sets an NCAA FBS single-game total-offense record (819 yards) against Oklahoma on October 22; wins the Sammy Baugh Trophy.
- 2017Kansas City trades up with the Buffalo Bills to draft him 10th overall; his reported Wonderlic score from the pre-draft process is 24.
- 2018Becomes the Chiefs’ full-time starter and is named NFL Most Valuable Player.
- 2020Wins Super Bowl LIV in February and is named Super Bowl MVP for the first time.
- 2022Named NFL Most Valuable Player for the second time.
- 2023Wins Super Bowl LVII in February and is named Super Bowl MVP for the second time.
- 2024Wins Super Bowl LVIII in February and is named Super Bowl MVP for the third time.
- 2026Opens the season 3–0 as Chiefs starting quarterback, including a 24–10 win over Miami on September 27; active as of September 28.
Why no figure circulates
Following a claim back to its first appearance is the part almost nobody does — and it is what most people are actually asking.
Search interest in “patrick mahomes iq”, “patrick mahomes iq score” and “patrick mahomes football iq” is real and measurable, but it does not lead to an actual number. Unlike the pages this site has already audited for Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady, no aggregator site we could open prints a specific “Patrick Mahomes IQ” figure. Real IQ Test’s own explainer on the question concludes plainly that “there is no reliable public record showing that Patrick Mahomes has released a professionally administered full-scale IQ score” and warns that any number attached to him should be treated as speculation. What does exist, repeated on Wikipedia’s own infobox and on a handful of Wonderlic-focused sites, is a single reported test score: 24 out of 50, from the pre-draft testing before the 2017 NFL draft (where celebrity IQ numbers come from).
The 24 itself was never officially released. NBC Sports’s Mike Florio published the full 2017 quarterback class on April 23, 2017, led by Nathan Peterman’s 33 and closed by Deshaun Watson’s 20, with “Patrick Mahomes, 24” eighth of eleven — sourced, as it is most years, to Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, who “obtains and discloses” scores the NFL itself does not publish. That group’s NFL careers turned out to have almost no relationship to this order: Mahomes, its second-lowest scorer, became the era’s most decorated quarterback. Test-Guide.com, updated December 7, 2023, puts the average score for the quarterback position at 24 — the same number Mahomes reported, which is why EssentiallySports called it a “measly 24” rather than a low one: it is exactly typical for the position, not below it (see the format on our Wonderlic practice test).
Several of the sites that repeat the 24 also do the work of turning a hiring test into an “IQ.” JobTestPrep’s Wonderlic guide describes the test as “functioning frequently as an IQ test” and calls it “the leading NFL IQ test,” printing Mahomes’s 24 alongside Tom Brady’s reported 33 under that framing. That is the same conflation this site’s Rodgers and Brady profiles document: a 12-minute, 50-question employment test gets read as an “IQ test” because “IQ” is the word people type into a search bar. Extending the rule of thumb those two profiles use — roughly two IQ points for every Wonderlic point above 20, the score the test treats as average (how a Wonderlic score converts to an IQ estimate) — a reported 24 implies a ceiling near 108, well short of what either Rodgers’s 35 or Brady’s 33 implies. No site actually does this arithmetic for Mahomes; this page is the first place the number appears, and it is offered as a ceiling, not a measurement.
That ceiling sits below every other Wonderlic-anchored quarterback on this site: Tom Brady at 110–125 (reported 33), Aaron Rodgers at 115–130 (reported 35), and Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Harvard graduate, at 145–160 (reported 48). It also runs against the grain of how his peers talk about him: Fox Sports polled 38 NFL quarterbacks in 2024 on the league’s smartest passer, and Mahomes — by then a two-time MVP and three-time Super Bowl champion — received a single vote, with Rodgers named by fifteen; one respondent credited the offense rather than the quarterback, saying only “I know what type of offense he runs, and the play calls are pretty long” (what a cognitive test score does and does not predict at work). “Football IQ” — the Kansas City Star wrote in September 2025 that Mahomes’s “football IQ remains one of the highest in the NFL” — describes reading a defense and getting the ball to the right place, not a score on any test; on the one test he did take, Mahomes was exactly average.
How we read a number →Wikidata Q19667998 is the American football quarterback born September 17, 1995 in Tyler, Texas (current team Kansas City Chiefs), not a namesake. Wikipedia supports the birth facts, high school statistics, 2014 MLB draft, Texas Tech years, 2016 national statistical titles, Sammy Baugh Trophy, All-Big 12 and Academic All-America honors, the 2017 draft trade and pick number, a Wonderlic score of 24 in the pre-draft measurables table, both MVP seasons, and all three Super Bowl championships and MVP awards used elsewhere in this record.
Full reported Wonderlic scores for the 2017 quarterback class: “Nathan Peterman, 33; Trevor Knight, 30; Josh Dobbs, 29; DeShone Kizer, 28; C.J. Beathard, 26; Mitchell Trubisky, 25; Davis Webb, 25; Patrick Mahomes, 24; Chad Kelly, 22; Jerod Evans, 21; Deshaun Watson, 20.” States the scores were leaked and that Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel “obtains and discloses” them most years, not the NFL.
Wonderlic Test Practice (unaffiliated with Wonderlic, Inc.): “Ahead of the 2017 NFL Draft, Mahomes reportedly scored a 24.” Test-Guide.com: the average score “among players is around 24,” also the average for the quarterback position specifically. EssentiallySports: “Patrick Mahomes scored a measly 24,” with a comparison list (Alex Smith 40, Kaepernick 38, Rodgers 35, Mahomes 24, Bray 24, Favre 22, Young 6; Manning 28, Marino 15, Fitzpatrick 48).
Describes the Wonderlic as “functioning frequently as an IQ test” and elsewhere as “the leading NFL IQ test”; states “his Wonderlic score is reported to be 24” for Mahomes and reports Tom Brady’s as 33. No formula converts either score to an IQ number on this page.
Fox: 38 quarterbacks polled anonymously, three declined; Rodgers led with 15 votes, Stafford 12, Cousins 3, five others including Mahomes one each. “Patrick Mahomes — he of the three Super Bowl wins and three Super Bowl MVPs — was named by only one quarterback,” who said: “I know what type of offense he runs, and the play calls are pretty long.” Notes voters may credit coach Andy Reid instead. Kansas City Star, September 22, 2025: “Mahomes’ football IQ remains one of the highest in the NFL.”
The October 22, 2016 game: Oklahoma won 66–59; Mahomes “set the single-game FBS record for total yards in a game with 819” and “shared the record for passing yards in a game with 734” on 88 attempts and 12 rushes for 100 total plays; the two teams’ combined 1,708 yards set a Division I record, and the game produced seven national records in total.
Learn.org: “Mahomes majored in marketing while attending Texas Tech University,” and separately confirms the Sammy Baugh Trophy and All-Big 12 honors. EssentiallySports agrees on the marketing major and confirms he left “forgoing his senior year of college” for the 2017 draft without a degree; it also names a Big 12 “Football Scholar-Athlete of the Year” honor, a single-source claim we could not independently confirm, so it is not used in this record.
ESPN: final score Chiefs 24, Dolphins 10, on September 27, 2026; Mahomes completed 20 of 24 passes for 246 yards and two touchdowns; Kansas City improved to 3–0. NFL.com: Texas Tech, tenth NFL season, age 31, returned for the 2026 opener against Denver after an offseason procedure; no IQ or Wonderlic information on this page.
None appears in Wikipedia, Wikidata, the Fox Sports/Sportskeeda “smartest quarterback” coverage, or any page discussing his Wonderlic score. Real IQ Test’s own explainer states plainly “there is no reliable public record showing that Patrick Mahomes has released a professionally administered full-scale IQ score.” Also checked: celebrityiqs.com (no Mahomes page), footballiqscore.com (no results) and StatMuse (statistics only, no IQ answer). A page titled “Patrick Mahomes: Football Genius With An Exceptional IQ,” which a search snippet associated with a figure near 135, could not be opened — its domain redirected to an unrelated site with a mismatched security certificate — so it is not used here.
Bands and reported Wonderlic scores used for comparison: Aaron Rodgers 115–130 (35), Tom Brady 110–125 (33), Ryan Fitzpatrick 145–160 (48). The Rodgers profile is also the source for the Wonderlic-to-IQ rule of thumb applied here (roughly two IQ points per raw point above a score of 20, which the test treats as average).
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for Patrick Mahomes, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
No specific IQ figure circulates for Patrick Mahomes the way one does for some other athletes on this site. Search results for “patrick mahomes iq” return explainer pages stating plainly that none exists, plus a cluster of Wonderlic-focused pages repeating a reported score of 24 out of 50 from the 2017 draft process — a hiring test that JobTestPrep’s own guide frames as “functioning frequently as an IQ test.” A search snippet also pointed to a page citing a figure near 135, but its domain could not be safely opened, so it is not treated as a real source here.
No published IQ test result exists for Patrick Mahomes, and no aggregator page we could open states a specific IQ figure for him. We checked Wikipedia and Wikidata, Real IQ Test’s dedicated explainer (which states there is “no reliable public record” of a score), celebrityiqs.com (no Mahomes page exists there), footballiqscore.com (returns nothing) and StatMuse’s page for this exact question (football statistics only, no answer). What we did find, repeated across half a dozen sites and in Wikipedia’s own pre-draft measurables table, is a reported Wonderlic score of 24 out of 50 from before the 2017 NFL draft — unofficial, since the league does not release these scores, but undisputed everywhere it appears.
With no circulating IQ figure to test, the spread here is just the estimate’s own ends. What is missing from it matters: the reported Wonderlic score of 24 is not on this scale at all, and applying this site’s own Wonderlic-to-IQ rule of thumb to it — the same one used for Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady — produces a ceiling of about 108, exactly where this band tops out. That ceiling is lower than either of theirs because the one real number on Mahomes’s record is lower than either of theirs, not because his football career is smaller.
Want a number that does hold up? Every figure on this page is somebody’s claim. Take the 30-question test and get a percentile you can check rather than a figure you have to trust.
Patrick Mahomes — frequently asked
What is Patrick Mahomes’s IQ?
No IQ test result has been published for Patrick Mahomes, and no site converts his test record into an IQ figure. The only score on file is a reported Wonderlic of 24 out of 50 from the 2017 NFL draft process, which matches the average reported for NFL quarterbacks. Based on that and his documented record, this site estimates his IQ level at about 93–108.
Did Patrick Mahomes take an IQ test?
No result from a full-scale IQ test has been published for Mahomes, and no interview shows him discussing one. One cognitive test score is on record: a reported Wonderlic of 24 out of 50 from the 2017 draft process, a hiring test the NFL does not officially release and that some sites label an “IQ test,” though it is not one.
What was Patrick Mahomes’s Wonderlic score?
Patrick Mahomes reportedly scored 24 out of 50 on the Wonderlic before the 2017 NFL draft, ranking eighth among that year’s eleven drafted quarterbacks. NBC Sports and several other outlets have repeated the number since; it matches the average reported for NFL quarterbacks as a position, and sits below Aaron Rodgers’s reported 35 and Tom Brady’s reported 33, both drafted in other years.
What is Patrick Mahomes’s football IQ?
“Football IQ” is a reputation, not a score: it describes reading defenses and getting the offense into the right play. The Kansas City Star wrote in September 2025 that his “football IQ remains one of the highest in the NFL.” Yet in a 2024 Fox Sports poll of 38 quarterbacks on the league’s smartest passer, Mahomes received just one vote.
Is Patrick Mahomes a genius?
No test result supports that label. The documented record is a Wonderlic of 24, average for an NFL quarterback, alongside an NCAA total-offense record, two NFL MVP awards and three Super Bowl titles. Those are athletic and statistical achievements, not evidence of an exceptionally high IQ, so this site’s estimate is a wide, unremarkable band: 93–108.
How does Patrick Mahomes’s estimated IQ compare with Tom Brady’s and Aaron Rodgers’s?
Our band for Mahomes, 93–108, sits below Tom Brady’s 110–125 and Aaron Rodgers’s 115–130, the site’s other Wonderlic-anchored quarterbacks, because his reported raw score, 24, is lower than either of theirs, 33 and 35. All three bands rest on the same rule of thumb applied to an unofficial test score, so none should be read as a measurement.
Is Patrick Mahomes still playing in 2026?
Yes. As of September 28, 2026, Patrick Mahomes, 31, is the Kansas City Chiefs’ starting quarterback in his tenth NFL season. Kansas City opened 3–0, including a 24–10 win over the Miami Dolphins on September 27, in which Mahomes threw for 246 yards and two touchdowns.
How does my IQ compare with Patrick Mahomes?
You can find out in about fifteen minutes. The IQ Metrics assessment is 30 questions, scored on the same 100-mean scale used throughout this page, so your result and the estimate above are at least expressed in the same units — one measured, one inferred. Once you have a number, the leaderboard shows where it would sit, and how we score and norm it explains the benchmarking.
Where does this estimate come from?
From the documented record rather than a test — the method is named above and set out in full under how we read a number. Compare it against the other athletes profiles, starting with Magnus Carlsen.
- Take the 30-question IQ test — get a measured score and percentile of your own
- Average IQ by country — how the scale behaves across populations
- How IQ Metrics scores its assessment — the method behind our own number
- More on how IQ testing works — reliability, error and what a score can and cannot say
- More athletes profiles — same field, same method
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