It’s sort of rich for most people to grouse about how little the draft media knows, how mocks are mostly useless and just for fans, etc. when we know that NFL GM’s keep very close track of mock draft trends. I don’t remember which GM it was, it wasn’t Howie but someone like that, said he has a staff member compiling them and tracking trends all draft season. Because all the information from the entire league trickles down and coalesces into draft coverage at some level that even the NFL finds useful to track broadly.
Not to mention, most of us aren’t watching hundreds of hours (or even dozens of hours) of tape, building our own board, and then creating mock drafts from scratch that don’t rely on other widely available mock draft trends.
Sorry, but if you have any concept of who is going in the top-15 vs. mid-1st vs. late 1st/early 2nd and beyond…which is usually broadly accurate minus some shockers…it’s because you’re internalizing mock draft trends like everyone else and making that the framework of your discussion. We all (who pay attention to this stuff) work our own thoughts and opinions into this stuff but it’s still built on the same framework everyone else is operating from at this point in the process. Which is shaped by the sports media at large and draftniks specifically, with a garnish of NFL team information and a side of sports agent agenda.
Voice_of_Reason you’re the worst offender on this lately, casually dropping draft ideas that you only have in the first place because you absorbed them from the media like almost everyone else, but then constantly decrying how much useful information the media even has. Talking about draft ranges for particular 1st round prospects that you only conceptualize in the first place, same as me, because of mock drafts and draft media and bigger talking heads repeating what scouts and agents are telling them, etc. until there’s a “wisdom of the crowds” sort of consensus pool of knowledge that we all share that allows us to speak the same language for 2-3 months leading up to the draft.
You sometimes get feisty at the idea that NFL teams have scouts/coaches/sources or decision-makers leaking real information to the media but then there end up being informed 1st round mock drafts that are, in hindsight, pretty directionally accurate post-draft even if the exact details weren’t correct, obviously. That information all comes from somewhere, hundreds of online mock drafters, dozens upon dozens of media talking heads, etc. don’t just magically come to similar conclusions. The NFL leaks, scouts and draftniks talk, agents and coaches talk to people, that information trickles down into draft coverage and mocks, and for the major prospects in the first round at least, there ends up being a TON of accurate info out there. And we wouldn’t be able to discuss almost any of it intelligently if we didn’t all agree that it’s a shared pool of knowledge that we dip into to our hearts’ content, some deeper than others, and some with more actual knowledge than others. Hell, most of the analytic framework teams value (to whatever extent they do) was actually developed first outside their facilities by fans, media, etc. in trying to create a deeper understanding of their game. And that’s big business too. So the lines between NFL information and the media have become more blurred than ever.
But without immersing ourselves in the draft season media, which is basically like pureeing 1000 semi-educated voices into one digestible uber-smoothie of draft opinions to create a pile of conventional wisdom we all operate from, I’m sorry but most people would not be intelligently discussing these prospects, even the top-3 at each discrete position, at all.
We underestimate how much our own seemingly hard-earned opinions are shaped by the mocks, and the media you mock. We’re all in essentially the same hemisphere of draft knowledge in this thread and having conversations that makes sense because we do it within the framework the overall-actually-very-informed draft media creates and maintains for us. Especially when you consider how much the NFL usually protects its secrets.
But you can’t argue the minutia of the merits of these prospects in this thread imo, while at the same time knocking down the draftniks and mocks that create the essential knowledge base we’re all plugged into. It’s the only reason every message board, social media site, and friend group in the country are even able to have intelligent half-informed discussion about players most weren’t even aware existed until two months ago. Because while any individual might be wrong, lying, or mislead, overall the pool of knowledge is good and real NFL information is laced deeply throughout it. The efficacy of that information just diminishes the more variables come into play as the draft goes on. So by mid-round 2, even if a lot of stuff is still directionally correct, the specifics obviously are all over the place.
But mock drafts overall have a lot of real info in them, as a whole, on a large scale. Which is why I keep using the term “directionally correct”, because it’s not about specific individual leaks (though some insiders have a history of those), it’s about the general tenor of the conversation and the way the trends are moving, which NFL teams track as well, and end up reflected in the info we absorb. And lots of these draft media types do have real information they’re working off of, and it doesn’t end up mattering who has the real stuff and who doesn’t because it all gets absorbed into the fabric of the national discussion and we all end up with the general gist of what’s known.
It’s such a huge media event with such a strong tailwind of information dispersement that the average football fan who pays attention to this stuff, who can’t actually watch tape or grade prospects themselves at all, ends up pretty educated and able to formulate detailed opinions with articulate backing, that doesn’t come across as crazy or stupid at all most of the time. We have a whole thread of people here discussing this stuff and if we’re being honest, maybe 5% of us actually put in the work to really, actually know what we’re talking about in a vacuum. You and I are well-informed, but undoubtedly in the 95% if we’re being honest with ourselves. But luckily we aren’t operating in a vacuum and we’re all mostly able to cook up fairly educated, even sometimes nuanced, takes. To the point where we even feel able to critique our teams’ moves! That’s because the information environment created by national media, draftniks, etc. is so broadly well-informed that if we’re being honest even idiots end up pretty aware of the best current info we have, on the whole. That’s pretty amazing when you zoom out and think about it. Every year we come together and speak the same we’re-way-too-into-this language for a few months, and the discussion makes sense because we’re all operating within a pretty informed framework, with LOTS of good information mixed throughout. Directionally speaking.
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