The spectacle of the NFL draft is one of the best—and contentious—pieces of the NFL. On one side, it is the official entrance to the NFL lights, where talent finds its way into the league of endless talent. On the other side, as Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk writes, teams thrust rookies into unfamiliar circumstances with basically no control about their future. Along with the draft event, hype surrounds the process, where speculation and rumors run rampant for months. Mock drafts are a proponent of the draft process, in which NFL analysts “project” which teams will select each player. While in good fun, mock drafts speak to the nature of the rumor-heavy league and are a tool to satisfy and create fan expectations.

The NFL Draft is, or should be, left up to chance. Teams have a range of players they like, but given the unpredictable nature of 32 teams, it is impossible to tell the detail which players they will select outside of the more predictable top five or ten picks. Teams with later picks have as good a guess as anybody which players will be available by the time they are on the clock. Some NFL experts have decades of experience in drafting players, so they better guess which players will be available, but predicting the unpredictable is the essence of mock drafting.

All rumors are meaningless until they are true. This mantra runs correctly throughout every industry, even in professional sports. Players are more than everyday people and are seen as superstars off the field as they are on the field. Nobody, including the players drafted outside of team armadas know what teams think. Any guess is good which players are in a “pool” and usage of a drafted player.

Mock drafts create brand familiarity and comfortability for fans to become familiar with players. Through this psychological lens, the NFL implants fans with the idea that if the team drafts a player, they must be successful when that is not the case. First-round mock drafts appeal most to fans since they bring an element of “this player will help the team in the short term given x team drafted them early.” Along with mock drafts come fan expectations, and when players cannot live up to said expectations, fans may not be happy with those in positions of a team’s power. That creates more pressure on the team to develop a said player and the player to live up to expectations.

 Respected analysts in NFL fields produce the most well-known mock drafts due to their hierarchy in the sports media world. There is a low chance they get half the draft right, developing the perception that even the best insiders know as little as anybody else. Therefore, when reviewing a mock draft, people must remember drafts are an unpredictable process for everyone involved.

Mock drafts are the most well-known aspect of the NFL draft process and are ironic that people may say they know what will happen when the likelihood of that is next to zero. Mock drafts are a reference, not an end-all be-all, to which fans and analysts can tie together a player’s skills and their fit to a team. Other than that, if people buy into the concept of a mock draft completely, they will be burned out if a selection does not happen. While a fun part of the drafting process, keeping an outside perspective on mock drafts allows for a healthier understanding of the NFL draft process.

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