What is Peyton Manning’s IQ?
No IQ score exists for Peyton Manning, only a reported Wonderlic 28 and a 3.6 GPA earned in three years at Tennessee.
No published IQ test result exists for Peyton Manning, and the number that follows his name online is a reported Wonderlic score of 28 out of 50 from the 1998 NFL Scouting Combine, not an IQ. What is documented is a speech communication degree finished in three years with a 3.6 GPA, Phi Beta Kappa and five AP NFL MVP awards, a record that supports an estimated IQ of about 110–125.
Peyton Manning’s estimated IQ
- A reported Wonderlic score of 28 out of 50 from the 1998 NFL Scouting Combine: Fox Sports (April 23, 2013) lists “Peyton Manning, Tennessee 28,” and TSN (February 11, 2015) prints it in a table it labels as unofficial reports. The Wonderlic intends a 20 to indicate average intelligence (Wikipedia), so a 28 is above average on that test, though below the 33 reported for Tom Brady.
- A Bachelor of Arts in speech communication completed in three years with a 3.6 GPA (ESPN.com, July 5, 2005; a Footballguys profile from July 2013 gives 3.61), while starting at quarterback in the Southeastern Conference.
- Election to Phi Beta Kappa in 1997 (University of Tennessee Libraries; Wikipedia), Academic All-America and Academic All-SEC selection in 1996 and 1997 (CoSIDA Academic All-America Hall of Fame entry), and the AAU Sullivan Award, which the AAU lists under 1997.
- Five AP NFL MVP awards (2003–04, 2008–09, 2013), the Super Bowl XLI MVP award, 71,940 passing yards and 539 touchdown passes (Pro Football Hall of Fame). These document sustained decision-making at the top of one profession; they sit inside the range and do not prove a number.
Neither anchor is an IQ test. The 28 is a leaked raw score on a 12-minute hiring test that none of the pages we opened traces to a document, and a 3.6 GPA in one major shows diligence and ability without measuring it. The informal rule of thumb turns a 28 into about 116, so the band is built around that point and widened upward for the academic record, which makes it wide and uncertain at both ends.
- Born
- March 24, 1976, New Orleans, Louisiana
- Education
- Isidore Newman School, New Orleans; University of Tennessee, 1994–1997 — B.A. in speech communication, finished in three years
- Academic record
- 3.6 GPA (ESPN.com, 2005); Phi Beta Kappa (1997); Academic All-America 1996 and 1997; CoSIDA Academic All-America Hall of Fame (2018)
- Tests on record
- Wonderlic 28 out of 50, reported from the 1998 NFL Scouting Combine (unofficial); no IQ test
- NFL draft
- 1998, first round, first overall, Indianapolis Colts
- Career
- Colts 1998–2011, Broncos 2012–2015; retired March 7, 2016
- Honors
- Five-time AP NFL MVP (2003–04, 2008–09, 2013); Super Bowl XLI MVP; Super Bowl 50 champion; Pro Football Hall of Fame, class of 2021
- Status (October 2026)
- Retired as a player; co-host of the ManningCast on ESPN2, sixth season announced September 9, 2026
What an IQ of 110–125 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 Peyton Manning is
Peyton Williams Manning was born on March 24, 1976, in New Orleans, attended the Isidore Newman School there and played quarterback at the University of Tennessee from 1994 to 1997. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in speech communication in three years with a 3.6 GPA (ESPN.com, July 5, 2005; a Footballguys profile from July 2013 gives 3.61), had enough credits to graduate by his junior year in 1996 (Colts.com, June 28, 2018) and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1997. CoSIDA lists him as an Academic All-America and Academic All-SEC selection in 1996 and 1997 and inducted him into its Academic All-America Hall of Fame in 2018. A record like that fits ability somewhat above average rather than extreme, in the territory the site describes under an IQ of 120.
On the field, he finished 1997 as the runner-up to Charles Woodson in the Heisman Trophy voting, won the Maxwell Award and the Davey O’Brien Award, and left as Tennessee’s all-time leading passer with 11,201 yards and 89 touchdowns, as well as the Southeastern Conference career wins record (Wikipedia). The AAU Sullivan Award, which the AAU lists under 1997 and describes as given for character, leadership, athletic ability and the ideals of amateurism, followed his senior season.
The Indianapolis Colts took him first overall in the 1998 NFL draft. He played for the Colts from 1998 to 2011 and the Denver Broncos from 2012 to 2015, was named the Associated Press NFL MVP five times (2003–04, 2008–09 and 2013) and was the MVP of Super Bowl XLI on February 4, 2007, when the Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29–17 and he completed 25 of 38 passes for 247 yards and a touchdown. He finished with 71,940 passing yards, 539 touchdown passes and 14 Pro Bowl selections (Pro Football Hall of Fame). On February 7, 2016, the Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24–10 in Super Bowl 50, a game in which linebacker Von Miller was named MVP; Manning announced his retirement on March 7, 2016. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on February 6, 2021, and inducted on August 8, 2021, in the class of 2021.
After football he co-founded Omaha Productions in 2020, named after his trademark audible, and since 2021 has co-hosted the ManningCast, the alternate Monday Night Football telecast. In fall 2023 Tennessee made him a professor of practice in its College of Communication and Information, teaching topics that include sports reporting, video production and performance (NewsChannel 5). As of October 2026 he is retired as a player, and ESPN announced on September 9, 2026 that the ManningCast returns for a sixth season on Mondays on ESPN2 and the ESPN App (SportsVideo.org).
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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Peyton Manning: 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.
- 1976Born March 24 in New Orleans.
- 1997Finishes a B.A. in speech communication in three years; elected to Phi Beta Kappa; Heisman Trophy runner-up to Charles Woodson; wins the Maxwell and Davey O’Brien awards; the AAU Sullivan Award follows his senior season.
- 1998Drafted first overall by the Indianapolis Colts; the combine Wonderlic score later reported for him is 28 out of 50.
- 2003Earns the first of five AP NFL MVP awards (the others come in 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2013).
- 2007Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29–17 in Super Bowl XLI on February 4; Manning is named MVP.
- 2016Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24–10 in Super Bowl 50 on February 7 (Von Miller is MVP); Manning announces his retirement on March 7.
- 2018Inducted into the CoSIDA Academic All-America Hall of Fame.
- 2021Elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on February 6 and inducted on August 8; begins co-hosting the ManningCast.
- 2023Joins Tennessee’s College of Communication and Information as a professor of practice for the fall term.
- 2026ESPN announces on September 9 that the ManningCast returns for a sixth season.
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.
Peyton Manning’s IQ score does not exist in any record we found: there is no published IQ test result, and no page we found prints an IQ number for him (where celebrity IQ numbers come from). What people find when they search “Peyton Manning IQ test” or “Peyton Manning Wonderlic” is a different number, a reported 28 out of 50 on the Wonderlic, the 50-question, 12-minute test the NFL once gave draft prospects at its scouting combine. That makes this page unusual for the section: the number that circulates is a real, repeated, reported test score, and the open question is only what it can and cannot be converted into.
Tracing the 28 leads to reports, not records. Combine Wonderlic results are not published by the league, and TSN’s February 11, 2015 table of notable quarterback scores labels all of its figures as unofficial reports. The earliest dated pages we found are Mental Floss (April 24, 2012), which gives Manning’s result as 28 and says only that it was “reportedly” so, and Fox Sports (April 23, 2013), which lists “Peyton Manning, Tennessee 28” among the Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks of that moment in a post about leaked scores. Pacific Standard (January 29, 2014, reprinted by Salon on February 1) adds that the 28 tied him for 19th among starting quarterbacks at the start of the 2013 season and suggests the test counted for less with teams in the late 1990s. Sportskeeda, updated in February 2025, dates the result to the 1998 combine and puts the average quarterback at 24 without naming a source. We found no 1998 report, so 2012 is the earliest dated statement we can show.
Turning a 28 into an IQ is arithmetic on a rule of thumb. The Wonderlic intends a score of 20 to indicate average intelligence (Wikipedia’s Wonderlic article), and a popular conversion that doubles the score and adds 60 would map a 28 to 116. Each raw point is worth about two IQ points on that rule, so a few points either way on a 12-minute test move the result by ten or more (Wonderlic score to IQ conversion; for position context, what a good Wonderlic score is by NFL position). The same Fox Sports list reports 33 for Tom Brady and 35 for Aaron Rodgers, which the rule turns into about 126 and 130; Ryan Fitzpatrick’s reported 48, the highest on record for a quarterback, comes out near 156. On that scale Manning’s 28 is the lowest of the four, which is why the band on this page weighs his academic record alongside the test instead of resting on it.
Peyton Manning’s football IQ is a separate thing and the better documented one. Its best-known piece is the pre-snap call “Omaha.” Speaking at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas in March 2017, he called it an “indicator word” and a “trigger word” that told his offensive linemen the play had changed and the ball needed to be snapped right away (CBS Sports, April 12, 2017). That is a description of a communication system on a field, not a test score. Pacific Standard’s 2014 piece draws the same line from the other side: it calls him a football genius while noting that his intelligence does not show up on the standard measures. How much any score like this predicts about work performance is a separate question (what a cognitive ability test score predicts at work), and the NFL stopped administering the Wonderlic in 2022 (Wikipedia).
How we read a number →Wikidata Q7539 is the American football player born in 1976 (confirmed by Wikidata search and the English Wikipedia page’s wikibase_item), not Eli or Archie Manning. Wikipedia: birth, Tennessee years and B.A. in speech communication in three years, Phi Beta Kappa in 1997, 1997 Heisman runner-up, Maxwell and Davey O’Brien awards, 11,201 yards and 89 touchdowns, retirement on March 7, 2016, Hall of Fame election on February 6 and induction on August 8, 2021, post-playing career. The pre-draft box lists a Wonderlic of 28, noting all values are from the combine and citing nflcombineresults.com. Super Bowl XLI: February 4, 2007, Colts 29, Bears 17, Manning MVP (25 of 38, 247 yards, a touchdown). Super Bowl 50: February 7, 2016, 24–10, Von Miller MVP. Wonderlic article: 50 questions in 12 minutes, a 20 intended to indicate average intelligence, administration stopped in 2022.
Class of 2021; first overall pick in the 1998 NFL draft; AP NFL MVP five times (2003–2004, 2008–09, 2013); Super Bowl XLI MVP; 71,940 career passing yards, 539 touchdowns; 14 Pro Bowls; Broncos 24–10 over the Panthers in Super Bowl 50. No IQ test mentioned.
CoSIDA entry: Academic All-America and Academic All-SEC selection in 1996 and 1997, inducted in 2018. Colts.com copy of the release: the same years, enough credits to graduate by his junior year in 1996, Phi Beta Kappa honors. Volopedia: graduated in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in speech communication, elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Volopedia dates the Sullivan Award to 1998, the AAU to 1997; this record follows the AAU’s own listing.
Lists Manning as the 68th annual winner, honored after his senior season for character, leadership, athletic ability and the ideals of amateurism, and says he graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors. The page calls him a three-time Academic All-America honoree, which conflicts with Tennessee’s 1996 and 1997 selections; this record uses Tennessee’s years.
ESPN.com: graduated with honors with a 3.6 GPA, completing his B.A. in speech communication in three years, chosen for the GTE Academic All-American team. Footballguys: graduated in three years with a 3.61 GPA. No official transcript figure was found.
All give Manning 28 out of 50; InsideHook also calls Ryan Fitzpatrick’s 48 the highest recorded for a quarterback. Mental Floss says “reportedly”; Fox Sports lists “Peyton Manning, Tennessee 28” in a post about leaked scores; Pacific Standard and Salon say the 28 tied him for 19th among starting quarterbacks at the start of the 2013 season and call him a football genius whose intelligence does not hit all the standard measurements; TSN’s table says all scores are from unofficial reports; Sportskeeda dates it to the 1998 combine and gives the quarterback average as 24 without a source. None shows a test record.
No IQ test result or IQ figure for Manning appears on Wikipedia or Wikidata, the Pro Football Hall of Fame profile, Tennessee Athletics, the AAU or any of the Wonderlic reports above. We did not find a celebrity-IQ page that prints a number for him, and found no interview in which he says he took an IQ test.
Describes the popular conversion of IQ roughly equal to two times the Wonderlic score plus 60, which maps Brady’s 33 to about 126, and calls it a rough rule of thumb and an informal approximation with no published equating behind it. Applied to a 28 it gives 116. The page is not about Manning.
CBS Sports: at the Adobe Summit in Las Vegas he called “Omaha” an indicator word and a trigger word meaning the play had changed and the ball needed to be snapped. SportsVideo.org (posted September 9, 2026): sixth season of the ManningCast, Mondays on ESPN2 and the ESPN App. NewsChannel 5: professor of practice in the College of Communication and Information for fall 2023, teaching topics including sports reporting, video production and performance.
The sources behind our estimate
The figures that circulate for Peyton Manning, what we were able to confirm, and where the two diverge.
Searches for Peyton Manning’s IQ score return a Wonderlic result, not an IQ: a reported 28 out of 50 from the 1998 NFL Scouting Combine, repeated by Mental Floss (2012), Fox Sports (2013), Pacific Standard and Salon (2014), TSN (2015) and Sportskeeda (updated 2025). We found no page that prints an IQ number for him.
No published IQ test result exists for Peyton Manning. We checked Wikipedia and Wikidata, the Pro Football Hall of Fame profile, Tennessee Athletics’ Academic All-America release, the University of Tennessee Libraries entry and the AAU Sullivan Award page: none reports an IQ test. No celebrity-IQ page we found prints a number for him. The 28 appears on Mental Floss, Fox Sports, Salon, TSN and Sportskeeda and in the pre-draft box on his Wikipedia page, which cites nflcombineresults.com rather than the league. TSN labels every score in its table an unofficial report, Mental Floss says only “reportedly,” and none of the pages shows the test record. The only conversion available is the informal rule of doubling the Wonderlic score and adding 60, which gives 116; Riot IQ, on its Tom Brady page, calls that rule “an informal approximation with no published equating behind it.”
The outer numbers are the ends of this page’s band. The middle one, 116, is what the informal doubling rule gives for a reported 28; it appears in none of the sources we opened as Manning’s IQ, so it is a reference point, not a circulating claim. Because no IQ number is attached to his name, the page has nothing to correct downward; the reported 28 sits above the Wonderlic’s average of 20 and below the 33 reported for Tom Brady.
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.
Peyton Manning — frequently asked
What is Peyton Manning’s IQ?
No published IQ test result exists for Peyton Manning, so his IQ is unknown. The nearest number is a reported Wonderlic score of 28 out of 50 from the 1998 NFL Scouting Combine, which is not an IQ. From that score, a 3.6 GPA earned in three years and Phi Beta Kappa, this site’s estimate of his IQ level is about 110–125.
Did Peyton Manning take an IQ test?
No full-scale IQ test result has been published for Manning, and we found no interview in which he says he took one. What is on record is a Wonderlic score of 28 out of 50 reported from the 1998 NFL Scouting Combine. The league does not publish those scores, so the number rests on media reports, not an official release.
What was Peyton Manning’s Wonderlic score?
Peyton Manning reportedly scored 28 out of 50 on the Wonderlic at the 1998 NFL Scouting Combine, a figure Fox Sports printed in 2013 and TSN repeated in 2015 in a table of unofficial reports. The test is 50 questions in 12 minutes, and a 20 is meant to represent average. A 28 is above that and below the 33 reported for Tom Brady.
What is Peyton Manning’s football IQ?
Football IQ is a reputation for reading defenses and managing the pre-snap game, not a test score. Manning’s best-known example is the “Omaha” call, which he described in 2017 as a trigger word telling his offensive line the play had changed and the ball needed to be snapped. It is documented football skill, not a measured IQ.
Is Peyton Manning smart?
The record supports above-average academic ability: a B.A. in speech communication in three years with a 3.6 GPA, Phi Beta Kappa in 1997, Academic All-America honors in 1996 and 1997 and a 1997 Sullivan Award. None of these is an IQ measurement, so the estimate is a band, about 110–125, and football success alone does not settle it.
How does Peyton Manning’s estimated IQ compare with Tom Brady’s and Aaron Rodgers’s?
Our band for Manning, 110–125, matches Tom Brady’s 110–125 but is built from the opposite evidence: Brady’s reported Wonderlic is higher (33 against 28) and his academic record thinner, while Manning’s test is lower and his academics stronger. Aaron Rodgers’s 115–130 sits a step higher, on a reported 35 and a 1310 SAT.
Is Peyton Manning still playing football in 2026?
No. As of October 2026 Peyton Manning is retired as a player: he announced his retirement on March 7, 2016, after winning Super Bowl 50 with the Denver Broncos, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2021. ESPN announced on September 9, 2026 that the ManningCast returns for a sixth season on Mondays.
How does my IQ compare with Peyton Manning?
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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Photograph by Barcex, CC BY-SA 4.0. Background removed for the portrait above. · Photograph by All-Pro Reels (Lambeau Field, Green Bay, Wisconsin, October 24, 2021), CC BY-SA 2.0. Background removed for the portrait above. · Photograph by Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0. Background removed for the portrait above.
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