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A draft mockery There's just no way to figure out the NFL Draft
Posted: Thursday April 13, 2000 12:27 PM
You know, mock turtle soup isn't made from real turtles. It's mock. The turtle part. Not the soup. And here's another quickie example: A mockup of something? It's just kind of a practice run, you know, a look at what might be. See where we're going here? Mock drafts are all the rage this time of year. They are hotter than any Hot Stove League, more popular, even, than those damn "Whassssssup?" guys on those beer commercials. Everywhere you turn, someone's throwing one of these mock drafts at you. And all the experts, they all say something different. Courtney Brown is going to the Browns with the No. 1 pick. Or Peter Warrick is. Or LaVar Arrington. The Ravens are trading up. The Bengals are trading down. The Jets are all over the board.
Some team is throwing out a smoke screen. Another is strangely quiet. And then there's the incessant jabber about the players. That guy's too heavy. That guy's too light. His hands are too small. He's got character issues. His stock his rising, his is falling, that spot's too high for him. He's the best athlete available. The experts weigh team needs against the coaches' gut feelings. They look at combine results and 40 times. They shuffle hundreds of names on their big mock draft boards in their little mock war rooms. The NFL Draft is, without a doubt, the biggest offseason hoop-dee-do in any sport. There are people -- and we're not naming names here, Mel -- who make a darn good living off these couple of days in April. Check out the magazine rack in your local supermarket. Check out a few Web sites. It's nuts. This is all fine. This is all fun. And, as Dr. Seuss once said, fun is good. But you have to keep one thing in mind: It's all mock, folks. There's no turtle meat there. When you get right down to it, mock drafts are about as useful as a fastball in Enron Field. One trade -- remember, not so long ago, when the Cincinnati Bengals traded with the Carolina Panthers for the right to pick Ki-Jana Carter No. 1? -- and those precious little mocks get smashed right over the short porch. You know how many people have nailed every pick in their mock drafts? In the 64 years the NFL has been doing this? Nobody. Ever. Heck, teams have a hard enough time finding one guy to pick, let alone figuring out what every other team is going to do. You and me and the so-called "experts" -- we don't stand a chance. "If there were [draft gurus]," the Dallas Cowboys' director of college and pro scouting Larry Lacewell, told a Dallas paper, "they would be making more money than the quarterbacks in this league." If you insist on mocking up a draft, if you can't wait until Saturday to see how the thing really turns out, a nice number of correct picks to go for -- matching the player with the correct team at the correct pick -- is six or so. That's, like, fewer teams than Jeff George has been on in the last three years. Still, people will pore over these things as if there's some real value there. NFL teams, of course, have to do it. "As we go into them this week," Detroit Lions coach Bobby Ross said earlier this week, "we'll do probably kind of a mock draft each day." Which, we're guessing, is why the Lions are the Lions. Fact is, this particular draft may be particularly harsh to those who choose to get mocky. By most accounts, it's not a particularly star-studded draft, and it's not particularly deep at a whole lot of positions other than, say, wide receiver. The quarterback crop is weak, it's said. And there are loads of teams who have multiple first-round picks. That makes the possibility of trades even stronger and the probability of a lot of crumpled-up mock drafts a near certainty. "People trading up, trading down, last-minute jockeying for position," 49ers coach Steve Mariucci told Sports Illustrated. "It's going to be crazy." Mocking up a draft can be fun, of course, in the way that cheering for the Eagles is fun. But you know, in the end, it won't mean a hill of beans. They're mock drafts, after all. No meat included. John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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