Meet the Mockers

Special contributor Marty DaVille, an esteemed member of the WFNY Commentariat, is a freelance writer/editor and sworn enemy of b.s. in all its forms.

As promised, here’s the post-draft review objectively demonstrating the worthlessness of mock drafts, for which I wasted entirely too much time proving what a waste of time this waste of time is.

Round 1

A sample of 10 local and national mock drafts published by legitimate sources. These involved a total of 320 picks.¹ Of these 320 first-round picks, only 63 were correct (19.7%). Frankly, that’s higher than I had expected.

Here’s your scoreboard:

• Peter King, NBC Sports: 10 of 32 correct (31.3%) – picks No. 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, and 29
• Kevin Hanson, Sports Illustrated: 9 correct (28.1%) – No. 1, 2, 3, 9, 11, 15, 18, 23, and 29
• Daniel Jeremiah, NFL.com: 9 correct – No. 1, 2, 3, 11, 18, 20, 28, 29, and 31
• Joe Gilbert, WFNY: 7 correct (21.9%) – No. 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, and 20
• Chad Reuter, NFL.com: 7 correct – No. 1, 2, 3, 9, 11, 22, and 28
• Mel Kiper, ESPN: 6 correct (18.8%) – No. 1, 2, 5, 6, 11, and 28
• Will Brinson, CBS Sports: 6 correct – No. 1, 2, 4, 5, 18, and 28
• Mike Graham, Factory of Sadness: 3 correct (9.4%) – No. 1, 2, and 29
• Tim Bielik, Plain Dealer: 3 correct – No. 1, 2, and 7
• Anonymous, Pro Football Focus: 3 correct – No. 1, 3, and 10

Average: 6.3 correct selections

Everybody got the first pick correct and 9-of-10 got the second correct– only PFF got too cute; these two gimmes accounted for 19-of-63 correct picks (30.2%) – a nice head start.

Six mockingbirds got the Pick 11 right (Becton), and four each got the ninth pick correct (Henderson) and, curiously, the 28th (Queen) and 29th (Wilson) picks correct.

Surprisingly, only five mock-rakers had Okudah going to the Lions with the third pick, and only two had Tua going to Miami with the fifth. The rest all outsmarted themselves.

Only one mock star (Brinson) had Andrew Thomas going to the Giants with the fourth pick (it was only the fourth pick, and already the panel was almost unanimously stumped – Wow!). Moreover, nobody got a single choice correct for picks 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 30, and 32; that’s 12 shutouts. In addition to Brinson correctly calling Thomas at 4, only one mocker each got it right on picks 6, 8, 14, 22, 23, and 31. Taken together, that’s seven correct choices out of 190 actual picks (3.7%) at the two-worst performing slots. And, we’re still in the first round!

Browns sidebar: The PFF guy had both Delpit and Elliott going on Thursday. Good thing he’s not any good at this.

Round 2 (no deep dive)

While some mock-a-roons had us taking Delpit at 41, none of them had him at 44, so their mock was wrong. If a mock is to have any credibility at all, the mocksmith must correctly anticipate trades. Nobody gets credit for coming up with the right answer for the wrong reason.

Round 7 (just for funsies)

Because trying to predict the seventh round is beyond futile and borders on the obsessive-compulsive fortified with three fingers of delusional, I draftalyzed only their choices for the Browns selection with Pick 244.

I chose to look at 10 mockro-managers who went to that dark side: WFNY’s Cody Suek and the aforementioned Gilbert, the commentariat’s RGB, Martin McConnell of Dawg Pound Daily, Vinnie Iyer of The Sporting News, R.J. White of CBS Sports, Hanson again of SI, Matt Miller of Bleacher Report, and unnamed mockaronis from Walter Football and Draftek. Ten mock believers, 10 different picks. And, of course, none of them was correct since the Browns traded away their seventh pick. But even if they hadn’t, none of those 10 picks went at 244. The closest was Malcolm Perry, who was the 246th pick.

Conclusion

In the first round, which is the easiest of the seven rounds to predict, 257-of-320 picks were wrong. That’s a failure rate of 80.3%. In other words, four out of every five picks were dead wrong – and that’s in just the first round! It stands to reason that the success rate in each following round would be progressively worse. I would generously estimate that the success rate of a seven-round mock is 5.7% – an average of 2 correct picks per round.

So, why do mockey pucks persist in the conceit that they can accomplish what is not only intuitively but demonstrably a virtually impossible task?

Put some fast-actin’ Tinactin on that mock itch, boys. Quit wasting your time and go do something constructive.

Thank you for your attention. I will now follow my own advice.

#TeamHUMDRUM

Humans against Useless Mock Drafts with Respect to their Utter Meaninglessness.

Alas, see you again next January. [sigh]

1. 10 × 32 [↩]