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Notes -
NFL players take the Wonderlic test during the draft and as an avid NFL fan no one talks about it as a meaningful indicator in interviews or analysis. You can look up QB Wonderlic scores they vary wildly Peyton Manning got a 28, Mahomes got a 24, Brady got a 33, Harvard Grad and style icon Ryan Fitzpatrick got a 48.
I would expect the correlation between general intelligence and outcome to shrink if you're only sampling people who are dramatic outliers at a very narrow subset of intelligence. Which is to say that I don't think it's IQ rising to the top.
QB is an odd position where your chances to actually get experience in live reps is pretty limited. There are only so many snaps in practice and during games and only 1/22 people involved can practice that skill. You can get better at throwing and watching film but the key skill of reading defenses from the pocket is hard to acquire without organized large scale practices that require 21 other players to not be QB's.
For this reason it seems totally plausible to me that there's an early filter in QB development, where kids trying to play QB for the first time are going to be outcompeted for practice snaps by kids whose parents could pay for them to start playing football earlier or to attend football camps. Or who just had parents who could coach them up enough that they could win the initial practice snaps and improve.
This is similar to the effect that happens to hockey. Splurging on rink time and gear is much easier if you're rich or if you come from a family already involved in the sport and can get hand-me-down gear, but even that doesn't have the problem of needing 21 other people (13 if you're just doing 7 on 7) there to help you practice that they themselves aren't getting the relevant experience for.
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