Last Week In Mock Drafts
So, here it is, the mock draft results article you ‘This Week In Mock Drafts’ faithful have been waiting for your whole lives. I’ve been writing this feature since May 30 of 2011 and almost a year later we can finally see if any mock draft featured on TWIMD on GMEN HQ were correct with who they thought the Giants would take with their first round selection in the 2012 NFL Draft.
So, how about we get down to it and open the results envelope, shall we? So, the mock draft prognosticator that picked the New York Giants to take running back, David Wilson, from Virginia Tech, with the 32nd overall pick in the first round of the 2012 NFL Draft was…
Nobody!
Yup, you read that correctly. Not a single mock draft prognosticator that was featured in the many TWIMD I wrote up for GMEN HQ had Wilson going to the Giants. If you were to count them all up there was a total of 22 mock drafts that I covered, and if you include my mock draft, then that number would be 23.
You may not think this but not having a single mock drafter out there mocking Wilson to the Giants is a good thing, as it proves just how useless mock drafts can be. Anything can happen in the world of the NFL and a mock draft for the 2012 NFL Draft from May 2011 is pretty much worthless the moment it’s written. How about we go back to that very first mock draft I covered on May 30, 2011 to see what the crystal ball said the Giants should do but never did?
Before I do that though let me first give Ryan Van Bibber of SBNation.com some credit, as one of his mocks was the only one I could find that had the Giants taking Wilson at 32; some good guesswork there.
Now back to Chad Reuter, who put together a mock for CBSSports.com in May of last year, where he had the Giants selecting 19th overall in the 2012 NFL Draft. One strike against him already. Then he mocked a linebacker to the Giants: Vontaze Burfict. Strike two. What’s strike three? That Burfict, due to off the field issues and a poor combine, went completely undrafted.
That was possibly the worst pick Reuter could have made for the Giants last year and goes to show you why mock drafts don’t mean anything in the world of pro football. They are only useful when it comes to wasting time reading them or having a little fun trying to play keyboard GM.
We can give Reuter some credit though, since that was his first mock draft, and instead let’s use his most recent seven round mock draft that he put together for NFL.com. In that mock draft he had the Giants selecting TE Coby Fleener, who was a popular choice amongst many mock draft writers, but that didn’t pan out either. Although, Fleener was taken two picks later by the Colts, so that wasn’t such a bad mock guess.
Out of all the mocks I wrote about in TWIMD only one had mocked a running back to the Giants and that was done so by Darius J. Pendergrass from RealHypeSports.com. That running back wasn’t Wilson though. Neither was it a running back that entered the draft this year. It was Arkansas running back Knile Davis, who returned to Arkansas for another season after missing out on his 2011 campaign due to a pre-season season ending injury sustained during a summer practice.
Now Davis might become a Heisman candidate if his season plays out the way most predict it will. That would have been a pretty sweet pick for the Giants, but we would need a time machine of some sorts to make it happen and I don’t think Bill and Ted really care about the NFL enough to alter such course of events.
Some other names thrown around by various mock draft prognosticators when it came to guessing the Giants’ 2012 first round draft plans included Bobby Massie (taken in the 4th round by the Cardinals), Harrison Smith (29th overall in the first round to the Vikings), Nick Perry (Packers 1st round pick, #28 overall), Jonathan Martin (Dolphins 2nd round pick), Luke Kuechly (Panthers 1st round pick, #9 overall), Mike Adams (Steelers 2nd round pick), Kelechi Osemele (Ravens 2nd round pick), Zach Brown (Titans 2nd round pick), and Courtney Upshaw (Ravens 2nd round pick).
A hodgepodge of draft prospects that range from actually being drafted in the top 10 picks of the draft all the way to 4th round of the draft. Right there shows you everything you need to know about mock drafts and how valuable they are.
Really, the only two mock drafts that are actually worth reading are Mike Silver’s Ultimate Mock Draft, where anybody is free game to be drafted, and that includes current NFL players and Greg Cosell’s mock draft that is based solely on watching game tape; both obviously for different reasons.
Yet, even though we know that people still write mock drafts and we will still continue to read them at a furious pace because mock drafts let us get in on the fun of what it would be like to be an NFL GM who’s in charge of molding the future of their franchise. That’s also the reason why I’ll keep covering mock drafts for GMEN HQ throughout the upcoming season and hopefully someone will already have their 2013 NFL mock draft out so I can get right back into the groove of things and mocking in the free world.