We waited 42 days. After the NBA suspended their season on March 12, the big four American sports were at a standstill for 42 days until the NFL draft. As unusual as this draft was, we still got a brief weekend where the world of sports felt normal. Even from his basement, football fans have never been so happy (or happy at all, really) to see Roger Goodell.
Part of the grand tradition in the NFL draft is the practice of everyone and their mother publishing a mock draft. We at FantasyPros are obsessed with finding out who is the best at predicting the future, so we collected mock drafts from 212 experts from around the internet. That is by far the biggest pool of experts in the three years we’ve done this competition – the prior two years each had just under 140 experts.
Our accuracy methodology measures mock drafts on four axes, with the goal of capturing all the attributes that can be good about a mock. We focus on the first round, and rate how well each mock draft predicts:
- When each player would be drafted (4 points per pick)
- The order players in each position group would be drafted (3 points)
- Which positions each team would draft in the first round (2 points)
- Which team each player would actually end up on (1 point)
This year’s draft was, as a whole, much easier to predict than prior years. We saw a mock draft score over 200 points for the first time since running this competition. The median score in 2020 was 156, compared to 137 in 2019 and 135 in 2018. This was partially due to the unusually low number of mid-draft trades – there were only three trades involving first-round picks.
Without further ado, here are our most accurate experts for the 2020 NFL Draft. The full accuracy leaderboard (200+ mocks) is available here.
| Top 10 Mocks – Overall Leaderboard | ||
| Rank | Analyst | Points |
| 1 | Steve Serby – NY Post | 203 |
| 2 | Nate Bouda – NFL Trade Rumors | 196 |
| 3 | Jason Pruett – DRAFTPLEX | 194 |
| 4 | Albert Breer – The MMQB | 193 |
| 5 | Jared Smola – Draft Sharks | 190 |
| 6 | Matthew Freedman – FantasyLabs | 189 |
| 7 | Scotty Payne – Mile High Report | 188 |
| 8 | Elisha Twerski – numberFire | 187 |
| 9 | Shane Hallam – Fake Pigskin | 186 |
| 10 | Dave Birkett – Detroit Free Press | 184 |
View entire Accuracy Leaderboard (212 mocks graded)
Steve Serby from the New York Post put together an incredible mock draft for our first 200-point score ever. He managed to score in the top five of all four categories, including having the best score in two of them. He tied for the lead at projecting each player’s draft spot, and stood alone as the only expert to correctly predict the team/position paring for 23 of 32 possible picks. In second place we had Nate Bouda from NFL Trade Rumors, who also led the field in two categories. He tied for the lead at predicting the order the players would be drafted within their on-field position, and was one of only two experts to predict the correct landing spots for 13 different players.
As always, you can see the scoring breakdown for all 212 mocks in our Mock Draft Accuracy leaderboard.