Seattle Seahawks 2012 NFL Draft: Mocking Birds - An Examination of 53 Mock Drafts

As I said when I wrote about the 2005 NFL Alternate Universe, I have a love/hate relationships with mock drafts. I love that they give you a very rough idea about the draft, and turn you onto some players you would have not known about before. I hate that people take any of it as gospel and I hate it when one person (like Mel Kiper) says something and then 1,000 mock drafts mock the same player to a certain team.

Kiper knows more than me, but he knows as much about the future as Back to the Future Part II. Last time I checked, we only have four years left to make enough sequels to get to Jaws 19.

Do you have any idea how many mock drafts are out there? An obscene amount. Somehow, beyond all odds, Walter Football got to the top of Google's search for "NFL Mock Draft." According to statscrop.com, that makes the website worth about $630,000 and most of what they are known for is simply NFL Mock Drafts. Screw you, Walter.

On the other hand, without Walter this article would have taken a lot longer to write. Thanks to the NFL Mock Draft Database, I was able to quickly navigate through a bunch of mock drafts and see who was mocked to Seattle the most often. Why 53? Because I felt bad cutting out any of the sites (except for Bleacher Report, which I did cut out.) and I ended up at 53. It would have been nice to have a round number like 50, but why should I exclude one site from another? Honestly, some of these sites are really bad, others might be okay, but when you're getting this deep it's hard to know for sure. And 53-man roster is an NFL thing, so there.

For every pick that Kiper gets right, he's going to be wrong about another while Zack from Mississippi is going to get it right.

After the jump is a look at the full chart, plus what the numbers show us as the most popular picks, and a scenario in which Seattle gets Andrew Luck!

The scenario is ridiculous and makes no sense! But thanks for clicking "Continue..."!

Danny helped me load up a Google Doc with the full data on which website mocked who and it is here. Yeah, I needed help making a Google Doc. I'm an idiot, okay?!

What did we find out? The final results simply look like this:

Ryan Tannehill - 8

Devon Still - 7

Quinton Coples - 6

Melvin Ingram - 5

Trent Richardson - 4

Nick Perry -4

Whitney Mercilus - 3

Michael Brockers - 3

Luke Kuechly - 3

Alshon Jeffery - 2

Brock Osweiler - 2

Michael Floyd - 2

Nick Foles

Kendall Wright

Courtney Upshaw

Andrew Luck

The final tally (nfldraftsite.sportsblog.com had two guys, so that's the reason for the two picks.) shows that Ryan Tannehill, QB, is the most popular player mocked to Seattle, showing up on 15% of mocks. Devon Still, a defensive tackle from Penn State, is mocked on 13.2% of drafts. Finishing third, on 11.3% of mocks was North Carolina defensive end Quinton Coples.

Coples is considered to be one of the top prospects in the Senior Bowl, if not the best.

The outliers are interesting only in that they are outliers. How did Seattle wind up with Luck? Well, I'm not sure of the exact trade, but the Hawks apparently traded up with Minnesota to #3 and took Luck while the Colts selected Robert Griffin III.

If this guy is right, I quit. I'm done. There's no way that I can ever be as smart as that guy. He wins seven internets. However, I'm not too worried about it.

The thing about Tannehill showing up on the most mock drafts, is that while I do feel it is a possibility, I think it has more to do with some schmo' on the other side of the country assuming that because Seattle needs a quarterback, they'll just take the best one available. I just don't see the Hawks as a team that drafts for need over what their Big Board tells them to do.

I am undecided on Tannehill, but if he has a good combine and his draft stock starts to rise then maybe I will come around to the positive side. Seeing your draft stock rise between January and April is not always a bad thing. Jay Cutler is a pretty good quarterback (he is!) and he was a quick riser. Though I still think that as of today, Seattle could trade back and get a guy like Tannehill.

Four drafts said that we would take Alabama running back Trent Richardson. I see this as almost zero possibility as of today. I would like Seattle to draft or sign a backup running back, but I don't see Pete Caroll and John Schneider using a first round pick on anything other than a dire need. Unless Marshawn Lynch walks, then it is not a dire need.

Same goes for the 9.4% of mocks that had Seattle taking a wide receiver. I think the Hawks should replace Mike Williams, or at least get some more depth, but a first round pick? No way.

As for positional percentages:

DE - 35.8%

QB - 22.6%

DT - 18.8%

These are the three main ones, with the rest being outliers like LB Luke Kuechly from Boston College. He mostly showed up on really sketchy mock drafts when I was scraping the bottom of the barrel. Devon Still is listed as a DT, and that's where he'd fit in a 3-4 defense, but I've heard he could be an end in a 4-3. I don't know enough about his versatility at this point though and I assume he'll stay at 3-tech.

So, what did we find out from these mocks?

- Most The most common pick for Seattle in mock drafts is a defensive end. This is a reasonable choice in my opinion, and it's probably where most of our heads are at. Unless...

- Those drafts that say Seattle will take a quarterback and that it will be Tannehill. I'm starting to fall more in favor of drafting a guy like Osweiler in the 2nd round but a lot will change between now and April.

- Mock drafts are silly. Almost every draft said that Seattle was picking 12th. I assume because Kansas City comes first in the alphabet. However, picking 11th instead of 12th will slightly change things. But they did bring my attention to some new players. So why do it?

- Because it's relevant

- By now you should know that I'm only tricking you into going to my website and twitter.

Mostly this was just a project that I decided to do and see what the results were. It was more interesting than useful, but I'll let you decide what to do with the data. I'm just here for show.