The day after the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft, the common reaction is to point and laugh at how wrong the mock drafts and the draft pundits were, but the group actually didn't do too poorly as a whole on Thursday.
If Joey Bosa hadn’t gone No. 3, mock drafts would have nailed the 2016 NFL Draft
Joey Bosa to the Chargers came out of nowhere, but for the most part mock drafts didn’t do a terrible job of predicting the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft.
While the first two picks were essentially the free space on a BINGO card, the third pick was one that generated plenty of debate. By the time the first round began, our survey of 115 mock drafts believed it was likely to be Ole Miss offensive tackle Laremy Tunsil or Florida State's Jalen Ramsey headed to the San Diego Chargers with the third pick.
Notre Dame’s Ronnie Stanley and Oregon’s DeForest Buckner were the two darkhorses in the mix, but not one of the 115 mock drafts thought it would be Joey Bosa.
But after the third pick, some of the most often projected pairings ended up coming true. Buckner was the leader for the 49ers, and Vernon Hargreaves and Sheldon Rankins were runaway favorites to land with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New Orleans Saints, respectively.
Even trade targets like Jack Conklin of the Tennessee Titans and Leonard Floyd of the Chicago Bears were the favorite in the mock draft surveys. Still, there were surprises like Eli Apple to the New York Giants and Karl Joseph to the Oakland Raiders that didn't appear on either team's mock draft chart.
While the 2016 mock drafts ended up not being very wrong, the insanely premature 2017 mock drafts that will surely be published before the end of the weekend most definitely will be. And I have no intention of charting those for at least nine more months.
But given the mock draft survey’s mostly accurate projection of which players would land with each team, it’s likely a project I’ll pick up again in the future.
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