Grinding the Mocks Site Update
Weighted Mock Draft Data for the People!
The Gist of It
Happy Thursday, GTM family! I’m excited to share that I’ve finished making a pretty significant design overhaul to GrindingtheMocks.com. Not only have I converted the site to a more responsive user interface1 but I have also added a new section on team-based analysis with a new suite of Weighted Mock Draft metrics. This is on top of updating the site to include data through January 27th. Draft season is here, and its the perfect time to explore all thenew features that Grinding the Mocks has to offer!
A Quick Weighted Mock Draft Explainer
I’ve sometimes called this concept “Adjusted Mock Drafts” when I’ve shared this data with my friend Kevin Cole for his Consensus Mock Draft articles. When I’ve shared that data, Kevin has included this information alongside the post:
To calculate “Adjusted Mock Drafts”, we use “Grinding the Mocks” pick-by-pick mock draft data at the player, pick, and team level...Player, team, and pick mock drafts are counted and then adjusted accordingly based on the draftnik's historic accuracy and how close the mock draft is from the date of the NFL draft.
This is the same concept as my Weighted Mock Draft shares. For example, take the most recent mock draft by Daniel Jeremiah that came out earlier this week. The picks made in that mock draft will be weighted a couple of ways:
Time to Draft Weight → 1/(88 days from the day after Draft Day) = 0.01136364
Daniel Jeremiah’s Draftnik Accuracy Weighting → 0.9791667
Overall Weighted Mock Draft → 0.01136364 * 0.9791667 = 0.0111269
Therefore, even for a draftnik as great as DJ (my 4th-highest-rated mock drafter in the GTM Database), the driving factor of the weighting is the Time to Draft Weight, given that that is the primary driver of mock draft quality. This is also why weighted mock draft numbers are so low at this time in the process! For example, not many team-player pairings have weighted mock drafts higher than 1 right now, as you can see below with the current Cincinnati Bengals Round 1 Mock Draft Shares table.
Excited to share more features as I release them! My plans include:
Player-centric versions of these team-centric charts (see working version below)
Team-based charts for my Draft Capital Over Expected Metric
Round-by-Round heat charts by year and overall for prospect accuracy
Mock drafter accuracy top 10 tables by year and overall
Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions for features! I always love to hear from folks here or via email at grindingthemocks@gmail.com. Hope folks that have been impacted by the winter storm in the U.S. are staying warm and safe!
I’m also planning to do more regular podcasts with my pal Edward Egros around the time we do new releases, so keep a lookout for a latest conversation shortly. The next release will come out before I head to Indianapolis for my annual NFL Combine trip!