Enough of the Noisy NFL Mock Drafts: Bring on the Real Pressure, Picks and Drama

The NFL draft is one of the best events on the football calendar—the rare occasion that combines college fans with professional fans. The draft is a dream scenario for fans of both brands of high-profile pigskin, played out over one night and two days every spring.

The draft is great. It's all the noise around the event that makes it hard to endure.

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(Click the audio to hear Aaron Nagler, our lead NFL blogger here at B/R and some guy who runs a Packers blog, join me to talk about the NFL draft, the best storylines after Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III are picked, Nagler's coverage this week and why neither of us are fans of mock drafts.)

There are so many draft experts it has become impossible to know who to trust. This is expressly why the idea of a mock draft is something that should be summarily mocked.

Should fans trust the college football analysts who see these players week after week for four years but don't care as much about NFL team needs as which players are the most talented?

Should we trust the NFL reporters who probably don't know a lick about any of the college players but are hardwired into most NFL front offices and have every agent in the league on speed dial?

Should we trust the maniacs (I say that lovingly) who figure out a way to do both?

Our own Matt Miller works as hard as anyone I have ever seen to prepare for the draft. He is a self-made, bona fide draft expert and I trust his mock draft as much as anyone.

That said, his picks are totally off from the four mock drafts at NFL.com from other names I've grown to trust. Those mock drafts are different from the folks at ESPN or Yahoo or any other site that spends countless hours preparing mock drafts for fans to devour.

And devour they do. Mock drafts are big business these days, so I would be remiss to make an offhand comment about how random and arbitrary they are, going so far as to flippantly compare those who make mock drafts to guys on the corner who work tirelessly for years to perfect the game of three-card monte. No, I probably shouldn't make that joke.

The issue isn't that fans can't trust any of the people making the mock drafts, it's that we trust too many of them. When mock drafts end up being so different, it's impossible to predict who will go where and what any team will do in reaction to earlier selections.

Justin Blackmon could go anywhere from pick six to pick 13 in just the five mocks linked to above. The four NFL.com mock drafts have Michael Brockers going anywhere from 14 to 31 (Miller has him at 18 in his final mock draft). Who do we trust when the college scouts, former GMs and NFL insiders are 16 picks apart on the same first-round guy?

Do we just throw darts at a big board and hope for the best, or do we just ignore the noise and wait for the draft to actually play out?

Oh, and those of you who include hypothetical trades into your mock drafts—"we think the Vikings will trade out of the third spot and move down to 10 in a swap with Buffalo"—are insane. You need help.

That said, you are still better than the NFL fans who call sports talk radio to debate which defensive tackle their team should take after watching zero college football games this year and watching the combine and reading every mock draft on the planet to become a radio expert. You are better than them.

As a TV show, the NFL draft is about so much more than just what player will get picked by what team.

The draft is often a first look behind the scenes at the next crop of talent filling out rosters around the league. How much pressure must these kids be under, especially the first-round picks who are in New York this week?

If a top-10 team is still deciding who to pick, everything the players do is part of the job interview process, including how they handle the media, how they act when the cameras are turned off, how they respond to the bright lights of New York City and all the newfound attention they are getting. 

Anything and everything goes into the NFL draft process, as well it should. Players are about to become not just millionaires, but representatives of multimillion-dollar organizations that make up a multibillion-dollar industry.

Drafting the right player can't be just based on how he handles the pressure on the field. How players handle the pressure off the field, in some cases, will be just as important. 

That, of course, leads to the top storyline that will be played and replayed throughout the entire draft: Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III will be tied at the hip for their entire careers. Even if one of them flames out like Ryan Leaf, the two will be connected forever.

But how much do draft fans want to hear about that? There is so much more drama and uncertainty after the first two picks, it will be interesting to see how much TV focuses on the quarterbacks at the top. Will we be sick of the Luck-RGIII talk by day three? By the end of day one? Before the third pick?

Speaking of TV, the NFL met with brass at both ESPN and the NFL Network this week to discuss tipping picks before the commissioner announces them. How many times can Chris Berman "guess" which player will come off the board in a single draft? How many times were picks announced by reporters just seconds before the official announcement?

There is a balance between journalistic integrity—reporting the news when you have it—and putting on a good show. Fans want the show, which may hurt the integrity, especially when beat writers and other draftniks aren't beholden to those rules and can break news on Twitter before either TV network has the chance.

It will be very interesting to see how Twitter reacts to TV's attempt to not spoil picks. Agents are leaking stories to the media just as much as teams, so will Goodell have the chance to surprise anyone watching this year? As a fan of the drama, I really hope so.

In the end, the NFL draft is a perfect combination of feel-good football storylines and hardcore nuts-and-bolts team building that all fans can take something away from. There's not much time before it finally starts.

Try not to sweat all the hype leading up and please don't fret with all the rumors throughout the week. Mocking the mockers is so much more fun.