Mock drafts always sound like a good idea during the intoxicating pre-draft period. They rarely look as beautiful in the cold, harsh glare of reality on the morning after draft consummation. That was especially true this year.
Yes, Tradefest 2012 made mock drafts seem like a sillier exercise than ever this year. Yes, I'm writing that sentence on a site that included something called "Mock Draft 9.0." (Hopefully no one notices this post.)
Before we move on to the second round and forget this mock season forever, we wanted to take one look back at our NFL.com writers to see how their final mock drafts performed.
All of the trades made life difficult for ATL lead researcher Andy Fenelon, but he came up with the goods to the right.
Reasonable minds could argue about what's the most important column on the list. Michael Lombardi correctly predicted the most first-round players, only missing on three. Mike Mayock had the most players in the right spot, but trades wreaked havoc with his player-team accuracy.
Charley Casserly correctly matched the most players to teams, which is probably the key statistic here. Notable calls: Michael Floyd to the Arizona Cardinals, Quinton Coples to the New York Jets and Dre Kirkpatrick to the Cincinnati Bengals.
So let's crown Mr. Casserly 2012 Mock Draft Champion for NFL.com. That and $4.50 will get you a salted pretzel at Radio City Music Hall on Friday night.
UPDATE:By popular demand, we have included the results from those "other guys."
