Judgment Day for 2026 mock drafts: Grading Kiper, Jeremiah, Zierlein & Co.
Over the last few months, countless mock drafts have competed for our eyeballs and our clicks, and we've reviewed and summarized more mock drafts here on Blogging The Boys than I care to admit.
And all that pre-draft jibber-jabber is well and good - until you're held accountable for the accuracy of your predictions, which is exactly what we're doing today as we look at how good some of the biggest names (and some smaller names as well) in the mock draft business were at accurately predicting the actual outcome of the 2026 NFL Draft.
Today is judgment day for mock drafts.
Before we dive into the analysis, understand that we're not looking at these mock drafts with a sense of Schadenfreude, a malicious delight at seeing some of the big names in the business crash and burn - at least not too much. The draft itself is such a crap shoot that most mock drafts are bound to be inaccurate.
So today, we celebrate the mock drafters who were more successful than others at predicting the draft, despite all the vagaries inherent in the draft. To do that, we review 50 mock drafts published by draftniks who've shown up on these pages in one form or another over the last few years.
Mel Kiper once defined a successful mock draft as one that gets at least five direct hits (in which the correct player is matched to the correct team) and correctly predicts 27 out of 32 players drafted in the first round.
The fine folks at The Huddle Report use exactly that approach to grade mock drafts as well, and have just recently published their 2026 results. Their system is based on correctly predicting the player in the round (1 point) and matching the player with the correct team (2 points). Unfortunately, they only evaluate those mock drafts that were submitted to the Huddle Report to be scored. If a mock drafter doesn't submit his mock draft to the site, he's not graded.
No such luck here on BTB. If you got our clicks for your mocks, you're facing Mock Draft Judgment Day. And I don't care whether your mock draft carried some kind of disclaimer (this is what I would do as a GM, not what I expect teams to actually do," or some such nonsense); if you put up a final mock draft prior to the 2026 NFL Draft, you're going to be judged. End of discussion.
We're going to use the Huddle Report's scoring system, and the results of the 50 mocks are summarized in the table at the bottom of this post, but let's run through a few highlights first before looking at the total scores.
Accurately predicting the first round: Luke Easterling of Athlon Sports accurately predicted 30 of a possible 32 first-round picks. Runner ups with 29 picks each: Daniel Jeremiah of NFL.com, Ryan McCrystal of Sharp Football Analytics, along with Ryan Wilson and Michael Renner, both from CBS. In total, 27 of the 50 mock drafts met Kiper's threshold of getting 27 of 32 first-round picks right.
What the heck kind of big board were they using: Sam Farmer of the LA Times and Jason La Canfora, currently with Fansided, got only 23 first-round picks right, followed by a trio with 24: James Meche, ESPN; Bucky Brooks, NFL.com; Chris Simms, NBC Sports. If you had simply averaged out a few mainstream mocks, you'd have gotten a better result than this.
Nailed it: Phil Perry of NBC Sports Boston nailed 12 picks by matching the correct player to the correct team. Runner up is Lance Zierlein of NFL.com who nailed 11 picks. Not an easy task in a draft that saw 11 teams change their positions in the first round.
Oooops: Eric Edholm of NFL.com, Nick Wright of Foxsports and the combo of Nate Tice & Charles McDonald from Yahoo Sports matched just two players to the team that eventually picked them. Quite an achievement considering that Fernando Mendoza at No.1 was already a foregone conclusion.
The late-rising Malachi Lawrence: Momentum built in the last few weeks before the draft for Lawrence as a first-round pick, and 31 of the 50 mocks show him as a first-rounder. Most frequent landing spots
- 8: Dallas (20th),
- 7: Buffalo (26th),
- 7: San Francisco (27th)
Eight mocks had Lawrence picked by the Cowboys, which ranks Lawrence 13th among players mocked to the correct team (Caleb Downs only had seven correct player/team matches). That is unusually high for a player drafted that late and who was also a late riser. Was there a leak somewhere?
Loose lips sink ships. We know from ESPN's The Pick is In that the Cowboys tried to trade up with the Browns, and eventually settled for a pick-swap with the Dolphins. Mock drafters knew something was afoot: 10 mocks had the Cowboys trading up from #12.
The wisdom of crowds: The consensus mock draft at NFLMockDraftDatabase.com would have ranked T25 in our summary of 50 mock drafts with 26 correct players and 6 player/team matches. At 38 points, the consensus mock is just one point above Kiper's minimum (27/5) at 37 points. If you're a mock drafter and your mock drafts consistently score below this level, you probably have other things in life that you're better at and that you should focus more of your time on.
And to the winners the spoils: The best mock drafts this year were brought to you by Phil Perry of NBC Sports Boston with 52 total points, followed by Lance Zierlein of NFL.com (50), Evan Silva of Establish The Run (48) and Theo Gremminger of Fantasy Points (48). See the full results below:
body .sbnu-legacy-content-table td,body .sbnu-legacy-content-table th,body .sbnu-legacy-content-table { border: 1px solid #000 !important; border-collapse: collapse !important;}| Rank | Mock Draft | Correct Round | Matched to team | Score |
| 1 | Phil Perry - NBC Sports Boston | 28 | 12 | 52 |
| 2 | Lance Zierlein - NFL.com | 28 | 11 | 50 |
| 3 | Evan Silva - Establish The Run | 28 | 10 | 48 |
| 4 | Theo Gremminger - Fantasy Points | 28 | 10 | 48 |
| 5 | Dane Brugler - The Athletic | 27 | 10 | 47 |
| 6 | Jason Boris - Times News | 27 | 9 | 45 |
| 7 | Rob Rang - Foxsports | 27 | 9 | 45 |
| 8 | Daniel Jeremiah - NFL.com | 29 | 8 | 45 |
| 9 | Ryan Wilson - CBS | 29 | 8 | 45 |
| 10 | James Dator and Mark Schofield - SB Nation | 26 | 9 | 44 |
| 11 | Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz - USA Today | 26 | 9 | 44 |
| 12 | Albert Breer - SI.com | 28 | 8 | 44 |
| 13 | Dan Parr - NFL.com | 28 | 8 | 44 |
| 14 | Josh Edwards - CBS | 28 | 8 | 44 |
| 15 | Todd McShay - The Ringer | 28 | 8 | 44 |
| 16 | Luke Easterling - Athlon Sports | 30 | 7 | 44 |
| 17 | Field Yates - ESPN | 27 | 8 | 43 |
| 18 | Pete Prisco - CBS | 27 | 8 | 43 |
| 19 | R.J. White - CBS | 27 | 8 | 43 |
| 20 | Ryan McCrystal - Sharp Football Analysis | 29 | 7 | 43 |
| 21 | Joel Klatt - Fox Sports | 26 | 8 | 42 |
| 22 | Peter Schrager - ESPN | 28 | 7 | 42 |
| 23 | Matt Maiocco - NBC Sports Bayarea | 26 | 7 | 40 |
| 24 | Justin Melo - SI.com | 27 | 6 | 39 |
| 25 | Mike Florio - NBC Sports | 26 | 6 | 38 |
| 26 | Nick Harris - Fort Worth Star Telegram | 26 | 6 | 38 |
| 27 | Matt Miller - ESPN | 28 | 5 | 38 |
| 28 | Brent Sobleski - Bleacher Report | 27 | 5 | 37 |
| 29 | Michael Renner - CBS | 29 | 4 | 37 |
| 30 | Garrett Podell - CBS | 26 | 5 | 36 |
| 31 | Rob Staton - Seahawks Draft Blog | 26 | 5 | 36 |
| 32 | Staff - ESPN | 26 | 5 | 36 |
| 33 | Vinnie Iyer - Sporting News | 26 | 5 | 36 |
| 34 | Mel Kiper Jr. - ESPN | 26 | 5 | 36 |
| 35 | Austin Mock - The Athletic | 28 | 4 | 36 |
| 36 | Cris Collinsworth - PFF | 25 | 5 | 35 |
| 37 | Jimmy Kempski - Philly Voice | 27 | 4 | 35 |
| 38 | Curt Popejoy - Draftwire | 26 | 4 | 34 |
| 39 | K.D. Drummond - Cowboys Wire | 26 | 4 | 34 |
| 40 | Staff - The Athletic | 26 | 4 | 34 |
| 41 | Eddie Brown - San Diego Union Tribune | 28 | 3 | 34 |
| 42 | Chris Simms - NBC Sports | 24 | 4 | 32 |
| 43 | Jeff Risdon - RealGM | 26 | 3 | 32 |
| 44 | Jason La Canfora - Fansided | 23 | 4 | 31 |
| 45 | Sam Farmer - LA Times | 23 | 4 | 31 |
| 46 | Eric Edholm - NFL.com | 27 | 2 | 31 |
| 47 | Bucky Brooks - NFL.com | 24 | 3 | 30 |
| 48 | James Meche - ESPN | 24 | 3 | 30 |
| 49 | Nate TiceCharles McDonald - Yahoo Sports | 25 | 2 | 29 |
| 50 | Nick Wright - Foxsports | 25 | 2 | 29 |