Pro Football Focus

Most mock drafts come with the disclaimer that they are not trying to be predictive but rather a reflection of what the writer would do if they were in charge of the NFL franchises. This is very useful, as differences in opinion help us learn more than herd mentality does — it’s the basis for James Surowiecki's best-selling book The Wisdom of the Crowds. Since football fans bet on the NFL draft, we can add a market element to the typical approach. The PFF Forecast has spent the better part of a month and a half scouring the markets looking for value — and some of these markets have moved significantly, as evidenced by the wild ride the No. 1 overall pick has taken. The mock draft below is based on our interpretation of the current betting markets, with betting lines courtesy of our friends at DraftKings and other places. This is slightly different from Benjamin Robinson’s great work on Grinding the Mocks, which uses mock draft data and models built from them to make predictions on draft position. Both are wisdom-of-the-crowd approaches, it is just that the crowds differ. You can find last year’s version of this mock here.