*S21 NSFL mock draft analysis

[Troen]

The S21 NSFL draft class would apparently be one of the biggest in recent memory...if it weren't for the looming present of the S22 DSFL draft that has so many GMs and mock creators diving deep into the dpeth of the class to figure out gems. But putting the future aside, this was a great year to think about, talk about, and mock about in the draft. The official mock draft thread had 151 entries based on my counting (ignoring war-room responders). How did they do? Did the media articles do a better job than the collective forums response?

Data collection notes: I looked through the response thread on 2/28 after the draft presentation. I tried to correct names where possible (eg mmanuel Blackstone and Osiris Firestorm-forjd) but I'm not awarding the TPE for this so I didn't scrutinize it. I belive I cought all the Prince Vegeta renames and normalized them to that. There was at least one person who listed one player twice and I did not add a correction for that - if that person was drafted in the first round then they'd count for top 10 2 times. When I present numbers like standard deviation I usually round to 2 decimal points.

Recap
For those who weren't there, the first 10 picks of the draft were
1. Prince Vegeta
2. Otis Allen
3. Juniped Catfish
4. HeHateMe PickSix
5. Chris Kross
6. Osiris Firestorm-Fjord
7. Immanuel Blackstone
8. Dorfus Jimbo Jr
9. Douglas Quaid
10. Riles McTackle

User quick hits
Right picks (correct name at the correct draft position)
* Most right picks: BenDover with 5
* Fewest right picks: 45 users with 0.
* Aggregate right picks: Mean 1.56, median 2, mode 0, standard deviation 1.26
And, brought to you all thanks to my lack of a sponsoship with photoshop is the finest histogram mspaint can whip up:

Order is an illusion picks (ie you had the nume even if the slot the player was picked was wrong)
* Most top 10 names: ItsJustBarry, ScorpXCracker, SemiCharmedMike, and W.Sconnie with identical submissions and 8 of the top 10
* Fewest top 10 names: 3 users with 4
* Aggregate top 10 names: Mean 6.56, median 7, mode 7, standard deviation 0.64
Histogram of top 10 names:

OK Troen so that's neat and all. Anything else we can learn?

Picks by draftee
What was the breakdown of right position and right name for each draftee?

Prince Vegeta - picked right 83 times, picked in top 10 151 times
Otis Allen - picked right 4 times, picked in top 10 118 times
Juniped Catfish - picked right 0 times, picked in top 10 1 times
HeHateMe PickSix - picked right 37 times, picked in top 10 145 times
Chris Kross - picked right 65 times, picked in top 10 145 times
Osiris Firestorm-Fjord - picked right 25 times, picked in top 10 139 times
Immanuel Blackstone - picked right 8 times, picked in top 10 147 times
Dorfus Jimbo Jr - picked right 5 times, picked in top 10 5 times
Douglas Quaid - picked right 1 times, picked in top 10 130 times
Riles McTackle - picked right 7 times, picked in top 10 8 times

I think looking at the data this way shows that people had a fairly good sense on who a good chunk of the top players were (Vegeta, Allen, PickSix, Kross, Firestorm-Fjord, Blackstone, Quaid), just not where they were going. Catfish is the clear unexpected first round pick. Jimbo Jr and McTackle are interesting in having a very high correct placement (100% and 87.5%, respectively). I'm guessing that their selections were due to people having a good feeling about interest from teams and/or the team need. My personal analysis was that the Wraiths didn't need LB depth as much as other positions so the Quaid pick really surprised me along with basically everyone else - only HENDRIX 2.0 got the Wraith's selection correct. I had them taking McTackle in my mock with the Copperheads taking Quaid. Always interesting to see how my impression of needs as an outsider turns into the reality of drafting.

Mocked but not first round
For the players who were in mocks but not drafted in the first round, where did they end up? I made a little graph of the top 10 players plus a retiree that I think caught a few people.

The biggest 2 drops by position were QB and RB. I think these drops were mostly a reflection of teams needs (or rather, lack of them), especially with Catfish being the surprise first RB off the board. There is already another article going over that in presumably more detail.

Other mocks
Turning now to mocks in the media forum, I found these to examine. In roughly the order I found them:
1. thevoicelesscreator - 3 right, 7 top 10
2. Forty Jordy - 1 right, 3 top 10, doesn't actually have a 5th pick?
3. RansackTheUniverse - 1 right, 7 top 10
4. Frostbite - 2 right, 5 top 10
5. To12143 - 1 right, 7 top 10
6. Troen - 2 right, 7 top 10, missed Matt Murphy retiring oops
7. HENDRIX 2.0 - 2 right, 7 top 10
8. MN_Moosey - 1 right, 5 top 10, also had Murphy
9. FleshBagSoup - 1 right, 7 top 10
10. Vorshayla - 4 right, 6 top 10
11. AdamS - 1 right, 5 top 10, also had Murphy

Additionally, thefrowntownclown had an article about ordering within positions but I think it's too different than my analysis approach here to compare easily. I think there can be interesting learning from looking at draft ordering within a position, but when it comes to understanding which players go to which teams I'm not sure that it's the best tool. At a minimum, I think you need to know a lot of the details about what each team's needs are so that you can understand when and why they'll be going for each position.

Double additionally, iseedoug's real leak draft was "shockingly" not very accurrate.

For the 11 main mock articles, they averaged 1.72 right and 6 of the top 10 as compared to a 1.56 and 6.56 for the mock thread, respectively. 3 of the mock articles having Murphy is probably a big contributor - that's 27% of the mock artcles vs. 7/151 (~4.64%) of the thread posts. The slightly higher right placement stat is close enough that I don't think it's significant and I don't have a statistician lying around to check that math for me. The mock articles also had a lot of Dax Frost included in them which I think makes sense given his TPE totals - it will be interesting to see what details will come out of that situation in the future and how well Frost produces this year.

Conclusions
I imagine that everyone will want to learn more about the 3 'surprise' pick of the first round. Were they taken as a secret weapon? Did the players have great interviews with the GMs? Were the relatively less known names actually being actively competed for by multiple teams causing apparent reaches to ensure a competitor didn't leapfrog over their pick? We may never know (unless a GM wants to publish an article, hint hint) but I think it's going to make for the exciting kickoff to the S21 league year.

[Forty Jordy]

Great analysis, Troen!

I learned a lot since I wrote my mock draft. I had some S20 folks and had Blackstone twice and the article was too old already for me to go back and make the change. I ended up with 3 right picks in my PT mock draft which looks to be surprisingly good although I only had 5 players that went in the top 10.

Very surprised SaberCats did not pick up a RB earlier considering there top RB has gone IA. Although they did get some good picks.

Frost falling to pick 29 was my biggest surprise.

[HENDRIX 2.0]

Very nice. I'm still thunderstruck about Frost.

[Frostbite]

Very nice. I'm still thunderstruck about Frost.

same