Mock Draft Season Is Here
I wrote a complainer article for Football Savages around this time last year on this subject, but I’m gonna take my time to KFC double down on this bitch and complain some more, because it’s that time of year, my friends.
I’m glad football is popular enough to warrant year round news coverage. I truly am. As a snarky sports jerk, that’s pretty much fantastic. You think I have it tough when the season ends? Hell no, man! After that Super Bowl ends we get three months of draft coverage! Prospects! The Combine! Draft stock! Mel Kiper hair sightings on a regular basis! Awwwww yissssss.
But then there are mock drafts.
I hate them. They are stupid. They are essentially one step above Power Rankings in usefulness. The worst part is the absolute infestation of them that we face every March-April after the combine (but even before). Mock drafts exist because…it’s easy content filler and people like to argue about them. HEY GUYS, I THINK JOEY BOSA IS OVERRATED, CHECK OUT MY NEW MOCK DRAFT WHICH HAS HIM FALLING INTO THE TEENS. ARGUE ABOUT THAT WHILE I SIT BACK AND RAKE IN THE PAGEVIEWS. Why do you care what this (insert draft columnist here) thinks? Mock Drafts are guessing games that these guys are essentially playing for fun. Maybe it’s fun to try and pick what player goes where. I can understand the appeal of that once in a while. But these are mock drafts. We get new ones from every columnist pretty much every week. How many big boards does Mel Kiper go through per season? How many different iterations do we get from McShay and everyone else who covers the draft? Enough to make each one pretty much valueless. CHECK OUT MY NEWEST MOCK DRAFT. I CHANGED IT SLIGHTLY FROM LAST WEEK. NOW THIS GUY IS GOING 7th INSTEAD OF 10th! ARGUE ABOUT IT.
Has any mock draft ever actually been right? Just a 1st round picked correctly? Hell, how many of these “experts” even get the top 10 exactly right each year? Pretty much none of them. So why do we care who they think is going to get picked when, exactly? Last year near the draft some guy had Vic Beasley falling out of the first round and everyone went nuts. WHOOOOO CARES. Some people will fall out of the first, it happens all the time. Some make it into the first all the time. Yet this guy was getting dumped on for being stupid, when in reality the stupidity was everyone who gave any sort of value to meaningless content filler like a mock draft.
I find the most valuable draft analysis to be pretty much everything except mock drafts. I love how Mayock does it, releasing his list of top 5 players at every position. I find that kind of information far more interesting. Trying to figure out who are the best players at each spot is an interesting and relevant idea, because it’s likely exactly what the teams themselves are doing. I doubt teams do mock drafts. They probably try to list every player they like and need in some sort of order, and use that list as a guideline during the actual draft. Figuring out who is the best and what players fit what teams is interesting analysis, and far more useful to me as a fan trying to learn who these players are then how some guy “predicts” the draft will go down (and they are rarely right). I’d much rather read an article about who someone thinks the Giants should draft and why, instead of who they think they will get during a guess simulation game.
In the time this article was written the internet created 43 mock drafts.
I think they’re designed for trolls to get everyone mad
Each March the deluge of mock drafts serve to distract me from the deluge of brackets.
From yesterday’s food logos, we Tampanians (people from tampa; were not called tampons) eat fried grouper, not smoked mullet. Also we make better Cubans than miami. Only 1 month left until Arena Football starts with Storm vs. Predators and I’ll update y’all every game regardless if you care or not.
I’d actually like to see that. You better keep your promise pal.
I used to be a yearly Tulsa Talons season ticket holder until they moved them to San Antonio; anyway, it was a great way to get through the NFL offseason. Cheap too. Only like $150 bucks for 8 home games. That’s like a one game parking pass in the NFL.
Dang Dave, I know you are a passionate guy and all, but you just roasted Mel Kiper, without mentioning his hair. That is next level, congrats.
You must have missed the second paragraph:
“After that Super Bowl ends we get three months of draft coverage! Prospects! The Combine! Draft stock! Mel Kiper hair sightings on a regular basis! Awwwww yissssss.”
My favorite is the day after the draft, some idiot will rank players and put up a mock draft for the following year.
Actually, I’ve already seen a couple 2017 mock drafts.
Check this out, http://walterfootball.com/draft2017.php . It’s a 2017 mock draft with a 2016 mock draft in it. Speculation about next year based on speculation about this year.
Then after the draft, everyone grades the teams who didn’t take the players they wanted them to negatively, as opposed to actually waiting till they play. My most notable example is the Redskins. Scot McCloughan got criticized for drafting Scherff over Leonard Willams right after the draft, and got graded a D- by one organization. Then at the end of the season, they got more production out of their draft class than half the league.
WalterFootball is my jam tho
Dave, I would suggest that if you get some time you listen to The Move The Sticks podcast. It has 2 former scouts on it that talk about this stuff alot.
My one take away from that show on this topic is that they know mock drafts are pointless, and they don’t really like to do them that much. The other thing they point out alot is that they usually have a source in each team that tells him who they think the team is gonna take. So when people complain that the giants would never take whatever player, they say “Look, I’m just telling you what my source inside the giants told me”
So for major networks like NFL and ESPN where they have actual inside information, there actually is something behind some of those mock drafts.
Aw yisss Move the Sticks. Also pay attention to the text and not just the name. Usually they’ll give a nugget of which positions or players they’re hearing teams might target. Especially if what they’re saying is backed up by what the beat writers are reporting.
You forgot the rash of “mock mock drafts”, or “mock drafts if each team were picking 80s Hair Band members” or “mock drafts of draft picks from the past 5-10 years”
Is the next step Animal Planet doing a mock puppybowl draft?
Mel Kiper Jr. will now murder your family.
Let’s be real here, Dave. There is no way ONLY 43 mock drafts were written or created during the time it took you to write this article.
I checked like ten mock drafts and pretty much nobody has any idea who the Colts get. Useless
Amen
I enjoy mock drafts and power rankings to see how everyone else thinks about the teams/prospects and how it compares to what I think. Plus I’m starved for football on slow days.
Arena football my friend (just wait until April and espn 2)
I make a mock draft each year. Mike Mayock is the smartest person alive
We don’t need TE dammit! Richard Rodgers caught fire last year. We need an inside linebacker and perhaps an extra offensive lineman, particularly a left tackle! That way Matthews can get moved back to OLB and maybe Jake Ryan will mature along with that rookie ILB.
As if mock drafts weren’t bad enough, now I’m starting to see mock draft WEBS about players. /sobs in corner
You should do a comic on some hilarious Mock Drafts prospects that “experts” had going high, only to be either dropping into the second round or further, or the prospect ended up being a hilarious bust. I’m sure some analyst doubled down on a statement that came back to bite them in the ass.
mock draft are a bunch of haters bro. made me the hungry brotha I am today