New NFL scouting test: meet the wife

The process NFL Teams use to evaluate talent is a pressure-packed and grueling one. Right now, as teams look for free agents to fill key holes on their rosters, they're sifting through thousands of pages of scouting reports and dozens of hours of video to find the perfect fit.

There's one team that thinks it has hit on a smart strategy for identifying the best free agents on the market: They look for players with great wives.

When NFL receiver Laurent Robinson was starting his free-agent tour last month, he assumed all his visits would be like any other. He'd show up alone, talk to team officials about his playing style and maybe his 40-yard-dash time before discussing contract terms. Then the Jacksonville Jaguars called.

"I never planned to go," said Robinson's wife, Kat. "They asked him to bring me. We've been in the league five years; I never knew of anything like that. They said, 'We want your wife to come.'"

As far back as Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, athlete marriages have mostly been a source of entertainment and scandal. But the top members of Jacksonville's brain trust have drawn a link between good football players and stable marriages. Jaguars general manager Gene Smith said he borrowed the idea from college recruiting, where a parent is always involved, but simply shifted the focus from parents to wives.

Shahid Khan, the Jaguars' new owner, who made his fortune in auto-parts manufacturing, said he had the idea because he tries to meet all of the spouses of his employees. He said he has retreats in which his employees are encouraged to bring their spouses. Khan figured some of the things needed to be a solid player—like staying after practice or putting in extra work—require a stable home environment. The team's new coach, Mike Mularkey, spoke with Smith about the importance of a good family life during his interview process and just like that, a new NFL personnel theory was born.

"If you're happy at home with your wife at home, I think the energy level is higher," Mularkey said. "It's very important to me...There's a lot that goes with being married. I just believe the happier you are with your wife, the happier you are on the field. I really believe that."

Forget Robinson's 858 receiving yards last year; here's the real value of the former Illinois State star: "I think there's responsibility and accountability," Kat Robinson said of how the marriage benefits her husband's game. "He doesn't go out, we're homebodies, we're both in bed early at night and live a simple life. He even helps out around the house; he does the dishes." Robinson signed a five-year, $32 million deal with the team.

Smith first revealed his philosophy after the team signed Robinson and former Miami Dolphins starting quarterback Chad Henne last month. Henne, a former Michigan star, threw 27 touchdowns in his two full seasons as Miami's starter. But Smith noted that he liked Henne's wife, Brittany, as well as Kat Robinson. "When you get two people in their mid-20s that are married and have wonderful wives, they're kind of like me because I think they were able to over-marry," Smith said just after the signing.

The wives aren't solely there to be evaluated—they also get a sales pitch. When they first visited Jacksonville, the Jaguars gave both Brittany Henne and Kat Robinson tours of the team's practice facility and training rooms—the first time either said they'd seen one (wives are typically not at team facilities). They went to the beach and to lunch with Mularkey's wife Betsy. The team arranged massages for them at the hotel.

When they landed at the airport, both couples were picked up by Smith and never once talked about football, they say. Henne signed a two-year deal worth around $7 million.

The obvious and unanswered question is whether married athletes really perform better on the field. History is, of course, littered with successful athletes who were spectacularly unsuccessful husbands. And some of them are, or were, among the greatest athletes to play their respective sports.

The NFL is a regimented and complicated place—and a place where personnel mistakes are increasingly costly. If there's any league where there could be a "stability dividend" it's this one.

Brittany Henne said she helps her quarterback husband with studying the playbook and memorizing new hand signals. The Hennes have been dating since junior high. "I really think there [are] a lot of guys that come in single, you are very young and there are lot of women after the money, the fame," Chad Henne said. "They aren't in it for the right reasons. If you have a relationship before you come into the league, it builds your character and you get sustained in the way you live."

Aside from the late-night troublemaking that plagues many sports teams, life in the modern NFL involves dozens of hours per week in extra practice or film sessions. Since the players largely live at home and rarely travel during the season, sleep and discipline are considered must-haves.

Laurent Robinson said marriage helps since "you just have to be places on time and be in certain places and you really have to be alert, just like you would for any installs [of plays] every day." Robinson said he and his wife are expecting their first child in November.

While there hasn't been any serious study about the relationship between marriage and performance in the NFL, the institution clearly seems to help some athletes. The Robinsons have been married for a little over a year—meaning Laurent's breakout 2011 season was his first as a married man. "I can only speak from personal experience," Smith said. "When my wife came into my life, she made me a better person. I think you start looking at things in a more responsible way and you actually have an intrinsic reason to come home."

While the jury's still out on Jacksonville's marriage test, there's little debate that meeting a player's wife serves another important function: "She's usually a big part of the decision-making process," Smith said.

This article was written by Kevin Clark and appeared in the Wall Street Journal.