Les Bowen Thinks Mock Drafts are “Useless”- Is He Right? - Crossing Broad

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Les Bowen Thinks Mock Drafts are “Useless”- Is He Right? - Crossing Broad

Saw this tweet from Les Bowen at The Philadelphia Inquirer and found it interesting:

Editors keep telling us this is what readers want. I can’t think of anything more useless. https://t.co/i8q9ivum2k

— Les Bowen (@LesBowen) April 26, 2021

Les thinks mock drafts are useless? But Inquirer editors want mock drafts? Does this mean Bowen is in open revolt against his superiors? Should he be reprimanded? Share your thoughts at 610-632-0975.

But to answer the question at hand, and play Devil’s Advocate for the sake of the article, I’d say no, mock drafts are not useless. Not totally.

The problem with mock drafts is actually two things:

1. Everybody and their brother does a mock draft these days, to the point where we’re just oversaturated with mocks. We have mock fatigue.
2. People are oftentimes absorbing mocks incorrectly. It’s not about the players specifically mocked to the Eagles, and whether or not the author gets it right; it’s about learning little pieces of information in the process.

Let me start with number two –

When you look at a mock draft and see player X to the Eagles at 12, and player Y to the Giants at 11, you gain knowledge about other teams, what they have, and what they currently need. New York could use a receiver, so if Ja’Marr Chase and Kyle Pitts are off the board, but Jaylen Waddle and DeVonta Smith are still there, are the G-Men gonna take a player the Eagles might want? And if not, does that open the door for Patrick Surtain and Jaycee Horn instead? Joe Judge already has two good corners, so he probably won’t draft one.

That’s the stuff we should be considering when looking at these mocks. It’s not about accuracy, since a lot of people are just throwing shit at the wall, and only the super-plugged-in guys are giving us real tidbits as to what actually might happen. The real takeaway from most mock drafts is that we’re just collecting knowledge while saying to ourselves, “hey maybe this guy will be available here.”

And then we use that knowledge to play out different scenarios in our head, which is fun. And harmless! Les sometimes hates fun, but hypotheticals play well in the newspaper reader/radio listener space, because it’s just guys talking sports. The barber wants to know what the Eagles are gonna do at 12. My dentist asked about the Birds a while back.

Likewise, NBA fans love to talk about trade scenarios and abuse the ESPN trade machine. Baseball fans talk about free agent targets. Mock drafts are basically just an exercise in water cooler talk, like a digital fountain to quench our offseason thirst.

The other thing about mocks that is more specific to our region is this:

Philly sports fans don’t watch college football.

Seriously, we’re one of the worst markets for college ball out there. So if a mock includes stats, or height/weight information, or a video clip or two, you learn about players that you’ve never watched before. Maybe somebody out there read Joey Baloney’s “Eagles-only mock draft version 17.3,” and 90% of it is total horse shit, but the other 10% is informative. That person learned that Horn opted out after Will Muschamp was fired. That’s why people do mock drafts, to share knowledge and give readers something to chew on. They are fun and harmless and sometimes you learn a thing or two.

We’ll be looking out for Les Bowen’s mock draft later this week in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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2021-04-26 18:59:30Z
https://www.crossingbroad.com/2021/04/les-bowen-thinks-mock-drafts-are-useless-is-he-right.html

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