One of the enduring questions regarding the draft is does anybody really pay any attention to the myriad of mock drafts that blight the internet landscape leading up to the draft. Well, if one is to believe Baltimore assistant G.M. Eric DeCosta, NFL teams at least are paying attention. DeCosta admitted during the Ravens’ pre-draft presser to surveying mock drafts saying that he “looks at all that stuff a lot, because I like to get a sense of league value — how other teams see players. Mock drafts are sometimes indicative of that.” In particular, DeCosta said he looks at mock drafts for trends including which players consistently show up or don’t show up a certain round. In fact, that’s also how we look at a lot of mock drafts. Analysts at ESPN and the NFL Network, for example, are going to be pretty plugged into the league and generally have access to team execs if they have questions about specific players. Of course, the answers they get can ofttimes be self-serving, but can be revealing if a trend starts to emerge. So you’ll pardon us as we head to our war room to put update our mock! In the meantime, it was kind of interesting to note in the Ravens’ presser that they kind of hinted that they might be leaning toward taking a defensive player with the 6th pick overall despite a big need at OT. Stay tuned.
