Wrapping up mock draft season
The 2024 NFL Draft has come and gone, and with it mock draft season is over. Some may memory hole mock drafts, but we don’t. We keep receipts.
This year we scored 50 mock drafters, a collection of national draft analysts, mock drafters, and a handful of off the radar mock drafters who scored well or have scored well in the Huddle Report’s “everyone gets a gold star” scoring system. I also include Arif Hasan’s big board as a sort of control sample; and Mike Florio because he purposely mails it in; if you can’t beat him, that’s sad.
The scoring system is simple. For every number of picks a mock is off, that mock drafter gets a point. So if someone mocked Kingsley Suamataia to the Chiefs at 32, they got 31 points because he went 63rd overall; if someone mocked Drake Maye to the Commanders at 2, they received 1 inconsequential point because he went 3rd. If they were bold enough to mock a trade and were wrong–and mock trades are almost always wrong–they were penalized double the points. This runs the risk of being penalized twice if they were wrong on both players, but nobody made them mock a trade, they brought this on themselves.
The goal is to see who had the best understanding of the draft. If someone thought that the Vikings were going to stay at 11 and draft JJ McCarthy, they were basically right and should be rewarded for that. Those who incorrectly predicted that Minnesota would trade up to 3, 4, or 5 for him should not get off without a penalty for their wrongness. While the Falcons stunned nearly everyone by taking Michael Penix 8th overall, a mock that had the Raiders trade up to the 30th overall to draft Penix should not be called “the most accurate.” We’re not handing out participation trophies here.
To the mocks!
Top Picks
Best Mock: Albert Breer
Breer is once again our champion, and once again doing it by missing only marginally. 19 of his picks were off by just 5 or fewer points, only 3 of his picks were off by double digits, his worst miss was just 14 points. Breer usually doesn’t rack up a high volume of correct picks, and didn’t this year with just one pick after Marvin Harrison being exactly correct. But he’s the go to mock drafter for a narrow range of where a player is going to go. The back of the 1st round is where many trip up, Breer had the second lowest score for picks 23-32.
His score of 130 is the lowest we have ever recorded.
Honorable Mention: Eddie Brown had a Breer-like draft in that when he missed he missed small, half of his picks were off by 5 or fewer points, and he had the lowest score for picks 23-32.
Close but no cigar: Brian Johannes could have taken the title but he mocked Kingsley Suamataia 32nd to the Chiefs.
Best pick that no one else had: Jonathan Jones correctly predicted that the Falcons would draft Michael Penix 8th overall. No one else had Penix in the top 10. Added bonus (no actual bonus was given), Jones’ mock came out a week before the draft, on April 18th, so he wasn’t going off of last minute information.
Best pick that almost no one else had: Vinnie Iyer, Daniel Jeremiah, Ian Valentino, and—with a late update—Field Yates correctly predicted the Ravens would draft Nate Wiggins at 30.
The Busts
Worst pick: Pete Prisco
Prisco mocked Jaden Hicks to the Lions at 29. Hicks went 133rd to the Chiefs, near the end of the 4th round, the only mock draft with a day three pick in the 1st round. This could have been wrapped up before the 4th round started if not for you Pete. Thanks.
Worst Group Effort: Pro Football Focus
The fourth worst mock draft was by PFF owner Cris Collinsworth. No one missed on more actual 1st round picks than Collinsworth, who had Jer’Zhan Newton, Kool-Aid McKinstry, Jackson Powers-Johnson, Cooper DeJean, Adonai Mitchell, and Ladd McConkey as 1st round picks. While a lot of people had many of those players in their mocks, Cris had all of them. At least this year he didn’t have a player in his 1st round that went in the 7th round!
Collinsworth also had Malik Nabers as WR1 to the Chargers at 5 and Marvin Harrison, Jr. as WR2 to the Giants at 6. He had the Vikings trade up to 4 for JJ McCarthy, the Cardinals trade up from 11 to 8 for Rome Odunze, and the Raiders trade up from the 2nd round to 31 for Michael Penix.
The second worst by total points was by Collinsworth’s minions, the PFF staff mock draft. Their biggest miss was Payton Wilson to the Colts at 29, who got that pick from an earlier trade with the Lions where Detroit took Quinyon Mitchell at 15. They also had the Texans trade up to 21 to draft Jer’Zhan Newton. Their non-trade bad picks were Cooper DeJean 17th to the Jaguars, Kool-Aid McKinstry 26th to the Bucs, Adonai Mitchell 28th to the Bills, and JC Latham at 30th to the Ravens.
Worst Mock: Charles Robinson and Nate Tice
Throughout the mock draft season the Yahoo tag team of Robinson and Tice have consistently had mocks that didn’t align with reality. Their final mock was no different.
They had the Falcons taking Brian Thomas Jr. 8th, the Steelers taking Terrion Arnold 20th, The 49ers trading up with the Cowboys to take Taliese Fuaga 24th, the Packers taking Kingsley Suamataia 25th, the Bills taking Ladd McConkey 28th, the Lions taking Michael Hall Jr. 29th, the Cowboys taking Jackson Powers-Johnson 31st, and the Chiefs taking Patrick Paul 32nd.
They also take home the prize of the worst top 10. The top 10 went pretty chalk this year, but they racked up a high of 47 points in those picks. In addition to having Thomas at 8, they incorrectly predicted that the Vikings would trade up to 5 for JJ McCarthy, that the Bears would trade up to 7 to take Rome Odunze, that the Titans would take Joe Alt at 9 after their trade with the Bears, and that the Jets would take Troy Fautanu 10th.
Dishonorable Mentions
Garrett Podell mocked Adonai Mitchell to the Vikings at 23.
Chris Trapasso laid it on the line with half a dozen trade ups. I respect that. Unfortunately for him, his trades alone netted him 232 points. He was also the only mock drafter to have Marshawn Kneeland in the 1st.
Chris Simms! Where would a bad mock draft be without Chris Simms. Simms had the Vikings trade from 11 to 3 with the Patriots to take JJ McCarthy, and at 11 had the Patriots take… Drake Maye. W h a t.
Odds and ends
Non-1st rounder that everyone had: Cooper DeJean was unanimously a 1st rounder.
Actual 1st rounder that no one had: Ricky Pearsall was unanimously not a 1st rounder.
Highest reach: Eddie Brown had Cooper DeJean 15th overall, the earliest anyone had a non-1st round pick.
Joes vs Pros: Every year I include the BGN community mock draft to see how it fares against the people who get paid to do this. It never does great but it always beats at least a few professionals. This year was far and away the best performance. It missed on double digit points only seven times, but six of those were picks that tripped up everyone: Jer’Zhan Newton, Michael Penix, Jackson Powers-Johnson, Cooper DeJean, Adonai Mitchell, and Kool-Aid McKinstry. The pick of JPJ at 22 was so bad that ablesser88 has been banned (kidding) but if the pick was instead the more reasonable Cooper DeJean it would have only saved 4 points.
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