What is Mock The Experts?
For years, all the major media outlets hire full time draft analysts for the sole purpose of evaluating NFL prospects. They spend countless months watching tape, analyzing combine results, and researching intangibles to come up with a complete and well-rounded evaluation. Ultimately, an analyst’s job is to predict how successful NFL prospects will become at the next level.
So when it comes time to make judgements on NFL players (usually after they’ve been in the league for at least 3 years), how do we know who was right? The truth is, we don’t. The NFL is a very “forward thinking” market, and there is little room to be concerned with the past. However, we feel as though fans should be able to hold draft experts accountable for what they say, and that’s what we’ll try to do with “Mock the Experts”.
On this site, we will give every major draft expert their own section where fans can read exactly what they’ve said about each prospect they’ve evaluated. You’ll be able to view their final big board, as well as their positional rankings. We’ll also throw in a “Tweets” section so you can read all of their hot takes (whether right or wrong) about the prospects they’ve evaluated. We will also have “player” pages for each prospect that highlights everything that was said about them.
For so long, draft experts have been judged on the accuracy of their mock drafts. I can guarantee you that this site will never post anything about mock drafts. That’s not the mission, because mock drafts are wildly inaccurate in nature. They are not a good indicator of how well a draft analyst does their job. In fact, ESPN draft expert Todd McShay validated the entire purpose of this site with the following quote (H/T to Matt Miller of Bleacher Report for posting):
I don’t think it’s necessarily defined on draft day. When we started this thing [college football scouting for ESPN Scouts Inc.] I tried to set it up as close as we could to what an actual college scouting department would do. I have two other guys who watch tape with me, and we go through the process as close as we can to what scouts, college directors and general managers go through. Other people are more reporters of the draft, but for me it’s all about evaluating and having our own opinions—and doing it based on evaluating tape and getting the same character and durability issues that NFL teams are getting. I am more concerned about how guys play in the league three, four, five or six years down the road than I am where they get drafted. We have seen guys like Tim Tebow [1st round, Broncos, 2010] get drafted entirely too high. We see guys who fall who end up being really good players, like Andre Ellington [6th round, Cardinals] last year. I’d much rather be spot-on three or four years down the line than on draft night. A part of the job is also conveying what I am seeing to people watching online or on television. But the biggest thing is finding the guys who will have success at the next level, and I hope over time that’s how I will be evaluated and not by mock drafts.
Original Tweet:
As you can see, even Miller (Bleacher Report’s lead NFL draft writer) supports the idea of Mock the Experts.
In the end, this site will be a fun exercise in determining who is the best (and worst) in evaluating the draft prospects and their success in the NFL.