Consensus Mock Draft 2014

By Michael Gertz
Thursday, May 8, 2014

NFL mock drafts are notoriously bad at predicting much of anything that happens in the real NFL Draft. They typically end up picking only about 5 of 32 players in the correct slot, and most of those occur in the more predictable top 5 draft picks. Real life draft day trades also complicate the matter, but even apart from them most mock drafts generally fall flat. But occasionally they do provide some general insight. Sometimes a certain player is commonly linked to a certain team that does end up drafting him, or a certain team is commonly linked to drafting a certain position.

In this article, we will take a "wisdom of the crowd" approach to measure exactly how much value can be gleaned from mock drafts in general. If there is any value in mock drafts, it should be more noticeable by looking at a collection of many mock drafts rather than looking at a couple individual mock drafts. We have recorded 20 different mock drafts from among the most popular sports media outlets to see what the most apparent overall trends are among them. A few of the mock drafts include mock trades, which complicate things slightly, but for our purposes we will ignore them.

Outlook By Player

Below is a list by player of their mock draft outlook. To avoid complications between 4-3 and 3-4 defenses, we have used new position names including ER (Edge Rusher) and IDL (Interior Defensive Lineman), while LB means specificially pass coverage linebackers. "Rank" is determined by awarding points to players for each mock draft in which they occur (32 pts for 1st overall, 1 pt for 32nd overall). "Draft Range" is the typical range of number pick that a player is mocked to, excluding only outliers. "Most Common" is the number pick that a player is most often mocked to, with the number of times out of 20 that the player is mocked to that number pick in parenthesis.

Rank	Player	Position	College	Draft Range	Most Common
1	J.Clowney	ER	South Carolina	1-3	1.HOU (19)
2	G.Robinson	T	Auburn	2-6	2.STL (17)
3	K.Mack	ER	Buffalo	1-5	3.JAC (11)
4	S.Watkins	WR	Clemson	3-5	4.CLE (9)
5	J.Matthews	T	Texas A&M	2-12	6.ATL (11)
6	J.Manziel	QB	Texas A&M	3-16	4.CLE (7)
7	M.Evans	WR	Texas A&M	4-13	7.TB (15)
8	T.Lewan	T	Michigan	5-19	9.BUF (6)
9	A.Donald	IDL	Pittsburgh	7-14	14.CHI (9)
10	E.Ebron	TE	North Carolina	9-19	9.BUF (9)
11	J.Gilbert	CB	Oklahoma State	8-25	10.DET (8)
12	B.Bortles	QB	Central Florida	5-26	20.ARI (7)
13	Z.Martin	T	Notre Dame	9-19	12.NYG (10)
14	A.Barr	ER	UCLA	8-20	16.DAL (10)
15	H.Clinton-Dix	S	Alabama	8-22	13.STL (7)
16	D.Dennard	CB	Michigan State	9-27	15.PIT (7)
17	O.Beckham	WR	LSU	9-28	15.PIT (7)
18	C.Mosley	LB	Alabama	8-31	21.GB (5)
19	C.Pryor	S	Louisville	13-29	13.STL (7)
20	K.Fuller	CB	Virginia Tech	10-26	22.PHI (4)
21	R.Shazier	LB	Ohio State	19-31	21.GB (8)
22	B.Cooks	WR	Oregon State	18-30	22.PHI (6)
23	M.Lee	WR	USC	18-27	23.KC (10)
24	B.Roby	CB	Ohio State	24-27	24.CIN (8)
25	T.Jernigan	IDL	Florida State	14-32+	16.DAL (5)
26	D.Carr	QB	Fresno State	20-32+	26.CLE (5)
27	J.Verrett	CB	Texas Christian	23-32+	25.SD (4)
28	C.Kouandjio	T	Alabama	19-32+	28.CAR (5)
29	X.Su'a-Filo	G	UCLA	19-32+	32.SEA (7)
30	M.Moses	T	Virginia	19-32+	28.CAR (6)
31	L.Nix	IDL	Notre Dame	21-32+	25.SD (5)
32	T.Bridgewater	QB	Louisville	20-32+	26.CLE (6)
33	R.Hageman	IDL	Minnesota	23-32+	29.NE (7)
34	C.Latimer	WR	Indiana	22-32+	30.SF (3)

Outlook By Team

Below is a list of draft picks and what teams are mocked to do with them (assuming they don't trade them). "Common Positions" lists the positions mock drafts have teams drafting most often, with the number of times out of 20 in parenthesis.

Pick	Team	Common Positions	Most Likely Player
1	HOU	ER(20)	ER J.Clowney (19)
2	STL	T(19),ER(1)	T G.Robinson (17)
3	JAC	ER(12),QB(5),WR(3)	ER K.Mack (11)
4	CLE	WR(10),QB(7),T(2),ER(1)	WR S.Watkins (9)
5	OAK	WR(9),T(5),ER(5),QB(1)	WR S.Watkins (8)
6	ATL	T(18),QB(1),WR(1)	T J.Matthews (11)
7	TB	WR(15),QB(4),IDL(1)	WR M.Evans (15)
8	MIN	QB(5),IDL(5),LB(5)	IDL A.Donald (5)
9	BUF	TE(9),T(9),WR(1),CB(1)	TE E.Ebron (9)
10	DET	CB(12),S(3),T(2),IDL(2)	CB J.Gilbert (8)
11	TEN	CB(8),ER(6),QB(5),TE(1)	ER A.Barr (6)
12	NYG	T(15),TE(3),IDL(1),LB(1)	T Z.Martin (10)
13	STL	S(14),WR(3)	S H.Clinton-Dix (7)
14	CHI	IDL(10),S(8),LB(2)	IDL A.Donald (9)
15	PIT	CB(12),WR(7),ER(1)	CB D.Dennard (7)
16	DAL	ER(11),IDL(5),QB(2)	ER A.Barr (10)
17	BAL	S(8),TE(4),T(3),LB(3)	S H.Clinton-Dix (4)
18	NYJ	WR(13),CB(5),TE(2)	WR O.Beckham (6)
19	MIA	T(12),G(3),LB(3)	T Z.Martin (5)
20	ARI	QB(12),ER(4),LB(3),WR(1)	QB B.Bortles (7)
21	GB	LB(13),S(3),TE(2)	LB R.Shazier (8)
22	PHI	WR(11),CB(6),S(2),LB(1)	WR B.Cooks (6)
23	KC	WR(15),CB(2)	WR M.Lee (10)
24	CIN	CB(14),LB(3),IDL(2),S(1)	CB B.Roby (8)
25	SD	CB(14),IDL(5),WR(1)	CB B.Roby (5)
26	CLE	QB(13),WR(3),CB(3),T(1)	QB T.Bridgewater (6)
27	NO	WR(7),CB(7),C(2),ER(2)	WR M.Lee (3)
28	CAR	T(14),WR(2),S(2)	T M.Moses (6)
29	NE	IDL(12),TE(4),QB(2)	IDL R.Hageman (7)
30	SF	WR(6),IDL(6),CB(5),ER(2)	IDL R.Hageman (4)
31	DEN	T(5),G(5),LB(4)	G X.Su'a-Filo (5)
32	SEA	G(7),T(3),ER(3)	G X.Su'a-Filo (7)

Summary

While our collection of many mock drafts gives a much clearer picture of likely outcomes, it still can't be considered an accurate distribution of probabilities. The problem of mock drafts is two-fold. First, analysts agree too much on which positions teams will draft. And second, they agree too much on the ranking of players within those positions. A more accurate overall distribution of possible draft outcomes would likely have each team choosing between more positions, and having more variation among which player they choose at those positions. After the draft, we will re-visit our collection of mock drafts to see how accurate they were overall, whether certain individual mock drafts were more accurate than others, and whether our wisdom of the crowds approach really did beat most individual mocks on their own.