Believe it or not, I do think about your team when conducting mock draft exercises. Quite deeply, actually.
I think about their immediate needs and their long-term ones. I think about who they have and don’t have on the roster. What scheme they run. Which position groups feature older and costlier players. Which position groups they drafted prospects at last year, and the year before that. Which picks the team has coming up next …
As much as I think about all that stuff and more, it’s incredibly difficult to truly put yourself in a team’s shoes and do the draft the way they might. Still, as daunting a task as it might be, it’s the best and, really, only way to do a mock.
This one is a little different: It’s projecting every team’s ideal first two selections. This should make fans of the teams without a first-round pick (Falcons, Packers, Colts, Jaguars and Broncos) happier. It also gives the projections a two-dimensionality that one-round mocks often fail to achieve. I even dipped as far as Day 3 of the draft, which is lightly reconnoitered turf in some media circles.
I essentially did a four-round mock (or as much of one as I could handle) to get all the way through Denver’s second selection at Pick No. 108, collapsing shortly thereafter. The goal was to draft as the team might draft but also to maximize each team’s returns as best as possible (without, obviously, allowing any prospect to be drafted more than once).
And remember: If you don’t like your team’s first projected pick, there’s another one just below it to hate even more.