Rams, Bucs, Bengals Among NFL Teams to Use Media Mock Drafts in Preparation Process

Media mock drafts aren't just for NFL fans.

A poll of front office members across the league from The Athletic's Joseph Person and Mike Jones revealed that 15 of 18 teams use mock drafts "in varying degrees in their pre-draft process."

According to Person and Jones, one NFC general manager believes every NFL team uses mock drafts to some extent and suggested that the teams that say they don't are lying.

The Los Angeles Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Cincinnati Bengals are among the teams that said on the record they rely on mock drafts to varying extents.

Rams general manager Les Snead said his team's analytics officials input mock drafts into databases that allow them to monitor trends. Those findings are then put into a report that is given to the front office.

The Bucs' approach to mock drafts isn't quite as in-depth. General manager Jason Licht and his team use mock drafts "as a kind of informal back check."

“We’ll take a look at a guy that we have very high on the board — and we trust our evaluations. But then every mock has him going in the sixth round and we’re like, ‘Well, either we know something that everybody else doesn’t or maybe every team feels the same way and just isn’t telling (anyone),’” Licht said. “Because I don’t tell anybody where we have guys on our board. So I don’t know how the mocks are made. But anyway, it kind of tells you, maybe we can get this guy a little bit later.”

Bengals coach Zac Taylor suggested that relying on mock drafts is not a new practice, saying mocks made by the media have been “in every draft room I’ve been in since 2012,”  when he got his first NFL coaching job.

Seattle Seahawks general manager John Schneider and Carolina Panthers general manager Dan Morgan were among the other executives who noted they use mocks in their pre-draft process.