Early NFL Mock Drafts: What's the Point?

I have a confession to make.

Of all the mock drafts I write every year, there's only ever one of them in which I'm actually trying to accurately predict as many picks as possible: The last one.

In my final mock draft every year, published on draft day, I truly make my best attempt to nail as many actual picks (and trades) as I can for the first round.

Every other mock draft I put together is about providing fans/readers with as much information as possible. That means breaking down each team's positional needs, and how they fit with the talent/prospects in that particular year's class. That means providing insight and scouting analysis for each prospect, outlining what they bring to the table, and how that might look in a particular team's scheme. That means talking about historical trends for teams and their front offices/coaching staffs, how the league tends to value certain position groups at different ranges of the draft board, and how those things combine with the available players to influence the decisions each team could make with their picks.

Every pick explanation in any mock draft, regardless of when on the calendar it's published, is an opportunity to give every fan as much information as possible about their team, the rest of the league, the prospects, and how all of that knowledge intersects to eventually lead to who could actually hear their name called at a particular draft slot.

Prepared for Everything

We've all been there.

Maybe it's a star player from your alma mater. Maybe it's somebody who caught your eye during a random bowl game, or while watching all-star practices.

Whatever the reason, we all have a tendency to lock onto that one player we want our favorite team to draft, and never move off that option, all the way up until they're on the clock. And what happens? Most of the time, we end up disappointed, because the team takes someone else.

The NFL Draft is one of the best events on the football calendar for multiple reasons, but two of the biggest are:

1. It's all about hope, excitement, and making your team better
2. Every team/fan gets to participate

Draft weekend, and the entire predraft process, is an opportunity for fans to think about all the ways in which their team could be better in the upcoming season, thanks to the young talent they're adding through the draft. But when we put the blinders on and zoom in on just one player as the "must-have" prospect of the class, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment.

Every mock draft is an opportunity for the writer/analyst to provide a different potential scenario for fans to think about, illustrating how a wide range of potential picks could have a positive impact on their team. It's a chance to explain why any number of prospects would make sense for their team, what the vision could be for that player in their scheme, and why it will make them better.

At the end of every predraft process, all of those mock drafts can collectively provide fans with the ability to be excited about pretty much any player their team could pick, giving them a sensible expectation for all the different ways things could go, and why any of them could make sense. There are still wild picks that come out of nowhere and are genuinely confusing to all of us, but for the most part, fans who read a wide range of predraft projections should have a reason to understand their team's pick, and be optimistic about what that player brings to the table.

Maybe it's just me, but that's way more enjoyable than signing up for near-certain frustration and disappointment by locking onto one player and getting mad about any alternative scenario.

It's Okay to Just Have Fun

Speaking of enjoyment, that's literally the entire point of all of this.

Sports, in general. Watching them. Writing about them, or talking about them in front of a camera.

I started writing mock drafts when I was a kid, typing them up in MS Word, with color-coded fonts for each team, printing them out and checking off the picks by hand while my dad and I sat on the couch all weekend. It was a blast.

It's still a blast, and the fact that I get to do it for a living now is rarely (if ever) lost on me.

There are definitely times when sports requires us to take things extremely seriously, but encountering a mock draft of any kind, at any point in the year, is not one of them.

It's okay to just do some things because we enjoy them, especially when it's something that has to do with people just playing a game. Sure, we can get into the weeds over personnel groupings and scheme fits, or size thresholds and rebuild schedules. We can have strong opinions on prospects and roster-building strategies. We can stand on the table and find our (artificial turf) hills to die on. We can be seriously invested in the process without taking ourselves, or the conversation, too seriously.

But it's a game, and games are supposed to be fun.

Mock drafts are fun. I love writing them, I love reading them.

The next one you come across, just gather whatever info you think might be useful to you about the teams, the players, the process. Feel free to chuckle at the rest, and look forward to the next opportunity to learn something you might not have known before, get excited about the talent that might be available for your team when April rolls around, and get ready for another fun season of football.