The Book of Jobbed Reviews Its NFL Mock Draft
It turns out mock drafts are *NOT* supposed to be parody
The 2025 NFL Draft has come and gone. In the lead up to this year’s draft, as there is every year, the football internet’s self-anointed cognoscenti developed somewhere between 100 to 10 million “mock drafts,” or a predictive list of what prospects will be drafted to in what order.
The term, in my opinion, is suspect. Using the word “mock” implies a simulation, but that isn’t really what happens. Mock drafts are typically developed by one guy sitting in a room, alone, looking at a spreadsheet of names and then copy-pasting those names into another column based on what he would do if he were in charge of picking players for all 32 teams.
A true mock draft, though, would have 32 different guys picking names from spreadsheets and then copy-pasting those names into another column, with each of the guys picking for a different team.
But I digress. With the draft over, it’s time to see how accurate my mock draft was. I only gamed out the first five picks. While I was a metric boatload of college football, I do not possess the ball knowledge to pick all 257.
PICK 1
What Really Happened: With the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, the Tennessee Titans selected Cam Ward, the University of Miami’s quarterback.
What I Predicted Would Happen: With the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, the Tennessee Titans selected Cam Ward, the University of Miami’s quarterback.
Grading My Own Prediction: A-plus work, Dan. Good job predicting what everybody else and their mother was predicting.
PICK 2
What Really Happened: The Cleveland Browns, who originally owned this pick, swapped a bevy of picks with the Jacksonville Jaguars, including this one. With it, Jacksonville selected Travis Hunter, a truly jaw-dropping athlete who is one of the few people with the stamina and intellectual acumen to play wide receiver and cornerback, two of the most physically and mentally demanding positions in the sport. I am very excited to see how Jacksonville squanders the first five years of his career.
What I Predicted Would Happen: The Cleveland Browns would forget the phone number they’re supposed to call to confirm their draft selection and have to forfeit the pick.
Grading My Own Prediction: F. Even the Cleveland Browns are not this incompetent.
PICK 3
What Really Happened: With the third overall pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, the New York Giants selected Abdul Carter, a very aggressive edge rusher from Penn State who will assuredly eat many an NFL quarterback.
What I Predicted Would Happen: The New York Giants would take advantage of Cleveland’s incompetency to pick the phone and draft Travis Hunter and his generational talent but would be prevented from calling in the pick when a fleet of robot alien spaceships appear in Earth’s orbit and decimates humanity’s telecommunication infrastructure.
Grading My Own Prediction: F. No aliens appeared on draft night but I’ve watched X-Files and I want to believe.
PICK 4
What Really Happened: With the fourth overall pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, the New England Patriots selected Will Campbell, a 6’6”, 324 pound offensive tackle from Louisiana who has an interesting facial hair configuration and is allowed to do that because he is 6’6”, 324 pound offensive tackle from Louisiana.
What I Predicted Would Happen: The alien invasion is fast, swift, and violent. But a weakness is found in the Robot Alien Mothership. If a football-sized explosive can be fired through a small hole along the mothership’s surface, a chain reaction will result in the power core, destroying it and deactivating the robot aliens conquering the Earth. A strike team is assembled. The Army will use the Osama Bin Laden Raid Stealth Helicopters to fly in Patrick Mahomes on a one way trip.
Grading My Own Prediction: D-plus. This is just the plot of Independence Day.
PICK 5
What Really Happened: With the fifth overall pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns picked up the phone and called Mason Graham, a 6’3”, 320 pound defensive tackle from the University of Michigan who has, unlike the Cleveland Browns, never lost a football game in the state of Ohio. Like the draft pick before him, he has an interesting facial hair configuration but he’s allowed to do that because he is a 6’3”, 320 pound defensive tackle (who is 50% of the reason Michigan beat Ohio State in the funniest upset of all time with the other 50% of the reason being a 6’3”, 340 pound nose tackle named Kenneth Grant who once chased down a running back at least 120 pounds lighter than him).
What I Predicted Would Happen: The Osama Bin Laden Raid Stealth Helicopters would get Patrick Mahomes onto the Robot Alien Mothership without incident. Unfortunately, the Robot Aliens predicted that this might happen, and had the Robot Alien equivalent of the Philadelphia Eagles’s defensive line on standby. They deploy them against Mahomes, and because the Army didn’t think to bring Mahomes an offensive line, he’s kind of screwed. He tries to evade them with his slippery scrambling, but he fails and is stacked by Robot Space Alien Josh Sweat. The aliens conquer Earth, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity.
Grading My Own Prediction: A-plus. The Army would forget to bring an offensive line what with their football team not having had one since 1945.