What Mock Drafts Don't Prepare You For

TLDR: Mock drafts are worth doing, and worth doing a lot — they get you used to your slot and show you how a draft really unfolds. What they don't do is build your own rankings. A mock lets you draft straight off ADP and never form an opinion of your own, and the picks that win your draft are exactly the ones ADP can't make for you: when a player you rated lower falls to "value," do you take him, or the guy you actually wanted? You can only answer that with your own rankings in hand. Build those, and every mock gets more useful.

What mocks are good for

Run a few and you get real things out of them:

• You see where players actually go. ADP gives you the average; a mock shows you how it plays out: who's gone by the end of round two, which position thins out first.
• You get a feel for your slot. Drafting early is a different rhythm than drafting late, and you start planning your picks around when they actually come up.
• You see how fast a run can go. When people start piling into one position, it empties quicker than you'd think, and a couple of mocks teach you to see it coming instead of getting stuck reaching.
• You get comfortable with the clock, so draft night isn't the first time you're deciding under a timer.

None of that is wasted. Keep doing it.

What a mock doesn't prepare you for

A mock tests how you draft. It doesn't build the rankings you draft from; you bring those yourself. And if you never sat down and made your own, what you're bringing is ADP. Nothing about a smooth mock changes that: you can draft straight down the consensus, feel good about your night, and still have no idea which players you'd actually take a stand on.

Those are the picks that decide your draft, and ADP can't make them for you. A guy you rated lower falls to "value," and you have to choose between the steal and the player you actually wanted there. A run empties the position you were about to draft, and you have to decide fast whether to reach for your guy or wait on the next tier. Both come down to your own order — where you had these players, not where the average did — and you can only work that out if you did the ranking yourself.

Run mocks all summer and you can still walk in on draft day drafting off the same consensus you'd have used anyway: smoother on the clock, no surer of who you'd actually take.

Where your own rankings come from

You get past that by ranking the players yourself — deciding ahead of time who you'd take over whom. Plenty of people do it by hand. It's just a slog: dragging a couple hundred names into order, then re-sorting every time news breaks.

On Fantasy Joes you build that ranking by answering quick this-or-that matchups instead of sorting a spreadsheet. You pick who you'd rather have, one pair at a time, and a rating system turns your answers into a full order, placing even the players it never put in front of you. You make the calls; it does the sorting. Keep going and the list ends up ordered the way you'd actually draft it.

And it's the same call you'll face on draft night: the player who fell to you against the one you'd rather have. The difference is you've already made up your mind, before the clock is on you.

Use them together

Build your own rankings, and mock against them. They feed each other: your rankings give you something real to draft from, and a live mock shows you where they're off — a guy you've got too high who never makes it back to you, a position you're thinner at than you thought. You fix the ranking, then mock again.

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FAQ

Are mock drafts worth it? Yeah, do a few. You'll get comfortable with your slot, the pace, and how players come off the board. Just don't expect a mock to tell you who to draft — it lets you lean on ADP the whole way, so forming your own opinions is still on you.

How many mock drafts should I do? As many as you find useful — people run plenty, and that's fine. There's just a point where the next mock mostly repeats the last one. Once you're comfortable with the flow, the better use of the next hour is building your own rankings, then mocking to test them.

How do I build my own rankings without a spreadsheet? On Fantasy Joes you answer quick this-or-that picks — who'd you rather have — and your ranking builds itself from your answers. No dragging names around a sheet. Free, no signup.