Sports Illustrated

Thank you for reading Mock Draft version 5,629,383. I polled a sample of GMs, head coaches and scouts around the league, trying a variety of approaches to cut through the smokescreens that will inevitably cloud the next eight days before the draft begins. In several conversations, I referred to mock drafts as the “scourge of my business,” only to be told that every team reads them anyway, though some are valued more than others depending on byline (greetings, trash bin). I also decided to ask casually a few times, “So, who are y’all drafting?” which elicited a mix of “best player available lol” and emojis with unclear meanings. In all seriousness, this is my best guess for what I think could happen with each pick, based on conversations with people much more knowledgeable than I am, but I should note that this year felt particularly difficult to project, largely because of the wildly disparate opinions on the group of QBs. I also think many teams will be looking to trade down. “This is a good year to have as many second-, third- or fourth-round picks as you can,” one team’s decision-maker told me. While there may be a small group of very elite players at the top, he explained that there also seem to be more players with a starter grade than in other years, which is why those second- to fourth-rounders are so valuable. (New England, not so coincidentally, has seven picks from 32 to 134). Fortunately, for all of our sakes, this mock draft ends at pick No. 32.