Mocking the Draft

There's nothing that gets people more worked up in the American sporting world away from the playing of the sport itself than drafts - specifically the NFL Draft. It's the time of year where people who watched 1-2 games of college football suddenly know about 90-95% of the players available to draft.

Ryan Leaf: From 2nd pick overall (almost 1st BEFORE Peyton Manning)
to Bust to Fugitive. Perfect example on not to always trust experts.

These "experts" know what player will fill each team's need the best, based highly on what they read from other "experts", which include talking heads on sports networks and radio.

The second category of experts has watched a little more football than the first group, but by no means would I call them experts. With very few exceptions, many of these folks are merely just guessing without any actual knowledge of who a general manager/coach is targeting with their exact picks.

I came across a site that ranks the efficiency of writers and other draft experts in their ability to pick the first round of the draft: http://www.thehuddlereport.com/Free/mockdraftscoring.shtml. The system for ranking who picks the best is fairly simple - 2 points are given to a guy who picks the exact team/pick that a player is picked by and 1 point is given if you simply picked the guy to be picked in the first round. Note that the best guys are able to pick 8-9 players to their correct teams (or about 25%), with the very best picking 12 of the 32 (less than 40%). That doesn't seem very expertly. It seems more like a batting average.

I don't care that expertly isn't a word - it is now.

With this year's draft, anyone who isn't able to pick at least two of the players to the right team is a complete moron, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone is able to match or exceed that 12 number, but probably no better than 13 or 14 right.

Anyone who spends a few minutes reading team mock drafts suddenly uses those mocks as the standard by which a player can be considered a reach or a steal. While it's not a bad start to base your opinions on this, I'd say you're better off reading the guys who study this for a living and not the guys who write the random blog (i.e. me). There's a reason I'm not doing a mock draft - I don't have an eye for evaluating college players outside of the statistics I see.

I'm definitely not familiar with offensive tackles - I like to rely on the real expert's opinions on those. I have an idea of some of the offensive studs and some of the defensive guys, but by no means do I know enough to develop a competent mock draft. And based on the scores that many of these "experts" have had in the past 5 years, neither do they.

I say - take these mock drafts for what they are worth: one man's opinion on who each team should or will select based on their perceived needs and "value" of the pick. Sometimes you may not have a particular need at a position, but a player may fall to your team that is too good to pass up. What one team may perceive to be a potential bust, another may see a Pro Bowler (well, this term may be antique now with the Pro Bowl potentially being extinct).

Enjoy the 2012 draft. Hopefully your team gets someone who helps your team out in the next 5-10 years. If they don't get someone that you want, there's a good chance they may know a little more than you and they are picking that player for a reason.

Unless they're the Cleveland Browns. In that case, I say - Enjoy your Super Bowl today!