Article:NFL Mock Drafts Are a Waste of Time

Our country is addicted to the NFL. Despite a total of 21 weeks of meaningful games and only one game at most each week for your team you probably follow the game the entire year round. You probably follow the combine and you probably follow free agency etc. That’s all in good fun but when you take the time to do your own mock draft you’re wasting your time and more importantly you’re wasting mine.

Now i don't think all mock drafts are a waste of time. Mock drafts by professionals and mock drafts in the NBA are interesting. Yet I think NFL ones are a waste of time… so why the difference? Well let’s take a look at the talent pools which the nfl and NBA are coming from. NBA players are coming from 12 person college teams, where generally there aren’t more then 1-2 NBA players on that team and if there are then their team is on tv constantly (like a UNC for example). On the other hand The NFL is taking players from 50+ person teams where there could be up to 5 or more guys taken from that team.

Then let’s think about watching the games. Let’s say Joakim Noah is a top prospect and you’re watching Florida play it’s relatively easy to see what he’s doing on the court. Even if he’s not directly involved in the play it’s easy enough to see if he set a pick, how he's spacing the floor etc. Now let’s think about an offensive tackle or a defensive back. Are you really paying attention to what the left tackle is doing every play? If a cornerback is not being thrown at is that because of his coverage or are they getting more help from the safety so the qb is going to the other side?

Now if you’re Todd Mcshay and you have access to all the game footage from all the games and multiple views of it you can get a pretty good view of what the guy can do. How many of us have that kind of access? You might say, sure we don’t have all that extra video but we still can see the combine and we can still see what the scouts are saying and form our own opinions. Why shouldn’t we take all that, take look at team needs and go from there?

Well because quite frankly it’s useless. Should the Dolphins take Matt Ryan with the number one pick? Well I’ve never really seen Joe Flaco play, so should I tell them to take Matt Ryan with the number one pick when I don’t know whether taking Flaco in the second round could be a better value? Are you prepared to even look at the second round to see if they need to pick a certain Ryan that high?

One of the most valuable players on the Giants this season was a defensive end out of Troy that they took in the fourth round. You might have heard of Osi now, but I can’t imagine you did out of college. Yet you might have wanted the Giants to take a defensive end in the first round that year not knowing they were gonna take Osi in the fourth round.

To put it another way… people who do mock drafts are the same people who boo Donovan Mcnabb on draft day because they wanted Ricky Williams.

So enjoy your mock draft, but unless its your job, I’m not interested.