This Week In Mock Drafts
This week in ‘This Week In Mock Drafts’ features Peter Schrager of FOXSports.com and his 2012 NFL Mock Draft. That he wrote up in early May of this year. He’s compiled an entire first round mock with predictions of what players will be taken at what slot in the first round to what team. That means in addition to coming up with a 2012 mock draft, he’s also predicted how every team will finish the 2012 NFL regular season.
It will be interesting to look back after the 2012 draft, if there is one, to see exactly how off base he was; or if he’s the second coming of Nostradamus.
Let’s start off at the top of his mock draft and see who Schrager thinks will be the first overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.
Schrager has the Seattle Seahawks as the worst team in all of football for the 2011-2012 NFL season. If the Seahawks have to turn to Charlie “Serpico” Whitehurst to lead them every game then this seems like a safe prediction that might come true. Luckily for the Seahawks, having the first overall pick means they get to take Stanford quarterback, Andrew Luck. The man many are dubbing “The Next John Elway.” Of course, anything can happen from now until the actual draft so who knows if Luck can continue his Heisman-caliber play but if he does we’ll probably be hearing his name early during the 2012 draft.
As for the New York football Giants, Schrager has them missing the playoffs and picking at 19th overall in the first round. One of the reasons why is their aging offensive line and the failure to address it early in the 2011 NFL Draft. So he takes it upon himself to fix that and gives the New York Giants an offensive tackle: Nate Potter, a Junior, out of Boise State. He’s a 300-pound behemoth who stands at 6’6. Something Eli Manning could never say no to. Potter last season was named to the ALL-WAC First Team and the Associated Press’ All-America Third Team.
Last week’s ‘This Week In Mock Drafts’ saw SI.com’s Andrew Perloff select a different offensive lineman, OT Mike Adams out of Ohio State, for the Giants. Read over last week’s article to check out the GMEN’s starting offensive line to see why help on the O-line is a priority for the Giants. With Kareem McKenzie getting older, rumors of David Diehl moving to guard, and a group of back-up O-lineman who haven’t proved themselves worthy of starting or who can’t stay healthy for a full season, the Giants will have to find a tackle or two of the future for that line at some point. Why not start with drafting one in the first round?
Other interesting nuggets of information to take from Schrager’s predictions include him thinking the Dallas Cowboys will win the NFC East and be the only team from the division to make the playoffs as he has Washington picking 2nd overall, followed by the Eagles at 18, and as you already know, the Giants at 19. Not only does he think the Cowboys will be NFC East division champs but that they’ll go all the way to the NFC Conference Finals, where they’ll lose to the eventual 2012 Super Bowl champs, the Green Bay Packers.
These 2012 NFL mock drafts have been lot to process this early during the NFL off-season; an off-season where the off-season hasn’t even started yet due to the lockout; because we have no idea what rosters will look like next season since free agency hasn’t been allowed to get underway. We’ll just have to wait and see how if anything that Schrager predicted now will come true next April.