When I went through college, I was trained to be an engineer. Engineers build
stuff. We slap things together and they're supposed stick around for a while,
serving some sort of hopefully useful function.
The more I learn about the sports media, though, the more I realize that
their products have a shelf life shorter than that of an adult Mayfly, which is
doomed the moment it leaves the water.
Of all the instantly dismissible products of sports journalism, though,
perhaps none are more lifespan-challenged than the mock drafts which inundate us
from January through mid-April each year.
While I was reading ESPN: The Magazine - your best resource for tracking the
latest trends in stylized corporate smarminess - I saw a reference dismissing
draftniks other than ESPN's resident guru Mel Kiper as "Kiper wannabes".
That particular snotty remark caused me to recall that this year's first
edition of Kiper's mock draft (which ESPN has the temerity to make subscription-only) has the Browns taking Chris Gamble at #8.
This is a prediction which, in my opinion, successfully moves Kiper from being a
Helmet-Haired Draft Nerd to a new category: Helmet-Haired Loon.
Don't expect Kiper's weird Gamble-to-the-Browns call to get a lot of
post-draft discussion on ESPN's various synergistic media holdings. It will be
forgotten as quickly as all other mock drafts. In other words, instantly.
Given how goofy Kiper's draft is, one can't help but wonder how accurate mock
drafts are in general. Does the combined brilliance of dozens of draft experts
add up to anything?
After looking at the results of last year's mock drafts, I would tend to
say...no. They don't add up to much.
Fortunately for all of us here at BerniesInsiders.com, we have the services
of one TBF, aka TheBrownsFan, to provide us with a collated version of all the
mock drafts he can find, which he calls the "Mock Draft Muncher".
TBF tracks all the mock drafts he can find, from those created by
mega-corporations (e.g., Fox Sports) to independent draft experts (e.g., Great
Blue North, Ourlads) to mock drafts hosted on Geocities and AOL web pages.
I took two of TBF's spreadsheets from last year, one in February and one in
April, containing 24 and 36 mock drafts respectively, and compared them to the
actual results of the 2003 draft.
For those who don't commit the first round of the draft to memory, here are
the selections which were made in the first round in April 2003:
Given those results to compare against, I measured the mock drafts in two
ways:
- How many selections did they get exactly right (player and spot in the
draft), and,
- How many of their predicted first round selections were actually taken in
the first round.
Here are the results:
| Date |
Exact Hits |
First Round Hits |
2/16/2003
24 Mock Drafts |
Average: 2.9 (9%)
Best: 5 (16%)
Worst: 2 (6%) |
Average: 20.3 (63%)
Best: 23 (72%)
Worst: 16 (50%) |
4/07/2003
36 Mock Drafts |
Average: 3.2 (10%)
Best: 6 (16%)
Worst: 1 (3%) |
Average: 20.6 (65%)
Best: 24 (75%)
Worst: 18 (56%) |
What do these numbers mean? Based on the results of 2003, we can reach a
couple of conclusions:
1. The average mock draft is wrong on 90% of selections.
The best-performing mock draft called only five of the thirty-two selections
correctly, and a typical mock draft only got three right. Note that the first
two selections of the draft in 2003 were practically a given: Carson Palmer and
Charles Rogers. Believe it or not, mock drafts actually called those two
selections more accurately in February than two weeks before the draft.
2. The average mock draft was wrong on a third of the players they said
would be taken in the first round.
Oddly, as we'll see shortly, the errors weren't at the bottom of the first
round, but in the middle. Only two-thirds of the players a typical mock draft
said would be taken in the first round actually were. Even the most accurate
mock draft missed 25% of the picks actually made in the first round.
3. It didn't get much better as we got closer to the draft
We actually started to see mock drafts getting less accurate in the top two
selections as it got closer to Draft Day. At the same time, mock draft writers
got a better handle on the rest of the top ten picks. Still, the overall
performance barely budged from that of the earliest mock drafts in February.
Here's another look at how many of the 2003 mock drafts were able to predict the
way the draft took shape:
| |
February |
April |
| 24
Mock Drafts |
36
Mock Drafts |
| Team |
Selection |
Exact |
Selected |
Exact |
Selected |
| Cincinnati |
Carson Palmer |
22 |
24 |
25 |
36 |
| Detroit |
Charles Rogers |
23 |
24 |
33 |
36 |
| Houston |
Andre Johnson |
3 |
23 |
17 |
36 |
| Jets |
DeWayne Robertson |
0 |
24 |
4 |
36 |
| Dallas |
Terence Newman |
9 |
24 |
19 |
36 |
| Saints |
Jonathan Sullivan |
0 |
21 |
0 |
36 |
| Jacksonville |
Byron Leftwich |
0 |
24 |
0 |
35 |
| Carolina |
Jordan Gross |
1 |
24 |
5 |
36 |
| Minnesota |
Kevin Williams |
0 |
21 |
0 |
33 |
| Baltimore |
Terrell Suggs |
0 |
24 |
0 |
35 |
| Seattle |
Marcus Trufant |
0 |
24 |
2 |
36 |
| St. Louis |
Jimmy Kennedy |
0 |
24 |
0 |
36 |
| New England |
Ty Warren |
0 |
4 |
0 |
12 |
| Chicago |
Michael Haynes |
5 |
24 |
1 |
31 |
| Philly |
Jerome McDougle |
0 |
23 |
0 |
34 |
| Pittsburgh |
Troy Polamalu |
0 |
7 |
0 |
7 |
| Arizona |
Bryant Johnson |
0 |
8 |
0 |
9 |
| Arizona |
Calvin Pace |
0 |
0 |
0 |
1 |
| Baltimore |
Kyle Boller |
0 |
15 |
0 |
35 |
| Denver |
George Foster |
0 |
8 |
0 |
11 |
| Cleveland |
Jeff Faine |
0 |
7 |
1 |
15 |
| Chicago |
Rex Grossman |
0 |
15 |
0 |
13 |
| Buffalo |
Willis McGahee |
0 |
1 |
0 |
5 |
| Indianapolis |
Dallas Clark |
0 |
3 |
0 |
2 |
| NY Giants |
William Joseph |
0 |
23 |
0 |
34 |
| San Francisco |
Kwame Harris |
2 |
23 |
1 |
36 |
| Kansas City |
Larry Johnson |
3 |
22 |
1 |
27 |
| Tennessee |
Andre Woolfolk |
0 |
22 |
2 |
29 |
| Green Bay |
Nick Barnett |
0 |
0 |
1 |
3 |
| San Diego |
Sammy Davis |
0 |
1 |
0 |
4 |
| Oakland |
Nnamdi Asomugha |
0 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Oakland |
Tyler Brayton |
0 |
1 |
1 |
7 |
Exact: Mock draft predicted player and position in draft.
Selection: Mock draft predicted player would be taken in the first round.
A number of selections were foreseen rarely (or not at all) by the mock
drafts. Ty Warren, Troy Polamalu, Bryant Johnson, Calvin Pace, George Foster,
Rex Grossman, Willis McGahee, Dallas Clark, Nick Barnett, Sammy Davis, and Tyler
Brayton weren't seen as first round picks at all by more than half the mock
drafts. None of the mock drafts had Asomugha being selected, and only one of
thirty-six foresaw Calvin Pace being selected in the first round - and he wound
up going in the middle of the round.
Closer to home, only one mock draft of thirty-six saw the Browns taking Jeff
Faine. More than half the mock drafts didn't see him being taken in the first
round at all.
Another interesting aspect of this is that the top of the draft actually got
less accurate as we got closer to the big day.
Personally, I don't remember the Bengals or Lions doing a lot of work to
camouflage their picks, but selections ranging from Byron Leftwich to Terrell
Suggs started showing up in April. It's hard to say whether this was because the
mock draft authors started to over-think the picks, or whether an odd selection
at the top merely was a way to get the mock draft some attention amidst dozens
of others.
At the end of the day, we can see that mock drafts - at least last year -
weren't all that accurate.
I'll leave open the question of whether it's the mock drafts that are wrong
("The Kiper Effect"), or whether NFL teams make some picks on draft day that
defy all sense ("The Arizona Cardinal Effect").
As Browns fans, the inaccuracy of mock drafts is just something to keep in
mind amidst the hub-bub between the Super Bowl and Draft Day.
When the mock drafts say a player you might want in orange and brown "won't
be available", or you read somewhere about how a team "is sure" to take a
particular athlete, bring out the salt shaker. Once you move out of the first
couple of picks, nothing is certain in the NFL Draft.
Want to write to Art? . We've found through
hard experience that putting the word "beer" in the title gets his attention faster.
Art also hangs out in the Rantatorium,
creating elaborate Photoshops of rivals teams doing stupid things and dodging rocks and garbage tossed by Ratbird
and Squeeler fans.