Well, it’s about that time of year again…time for fantasy football madness! The draft in the league I’m in is this Thursday and a good way I’ve found to prepare is to use some of the various fantasy football mock draft sites that are out there. Here are some that I have tried…
ESPN Fantasy Football Mock Drafts - This is probably the most professional looking mock draft site. It requires a simple free registration and there are tons of people drafting. The only down side is that you can’t pick your draft order - it randomly selects a slot for you. If you could pick a slot that matched your real draft, it would be a winner. I’m surprised ESPN doesn’t fix this. With the deep pockets they have, why would they skimp out on this feature? The only other gripe is people tend to leave the mock drafts at least 50% of the time…which will screw up the draft. Overall ESPN’s fantasy football mock draft site is good for quickie draft practice, but that’s about it.
Fantasy Football Calculator - This mock draft site is promising, but since the site doesn’t require user registration, it has been plagued with losers that come in at 2 a.m. and screw up the draft. Why? Nobody knows… the only motivation I can see is that a competing mock draft site is trying to undermine them. Or, they are just losers. Otherwise, this site is nearly perfect. I emailed them and suggested that they charge a small fee to help get rid of the losers. The good news is you can pick your draft slot that matches your real draft so you can have a realistic idea of how it might go. Keep drafting and every now and then you will have a good, realistic draft.
Mock Draft Central - This seems to be the most realistic mock draft site, but I will admit I have only tried the free version which only lets you do one draft per day. You have to pay to become a premium member (currently only $3.99/month) which gives you unlimited drafts. The site has what is called Coach Karma to help keep idiots out of the drafts. You can also pick your draft slot. The interface is a bit clunky - it’s hard to figure out who has drafted who, and what your resulting team looks like. They need to clean it up a bit and make it look more like ESPN’s.
Overall, considering it is the year 2007 and technology is everywhere you look, the fantasy football mock draft sites need more work. All that is needed is for ESPN to add the capability to let you pick your slot and use a karma system like Mock Draft Central uses….then you would have a near perfect service.
Do you know of a good fantasy football mock draft site? Please post a comment and let me know.
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Hey, just stumbled on your blog. I’m the owner of Fantasy Football Calculator. Thanks for the honest comparisons of mock drafting sites, and I’m glad that you found FFCalc useful at times. I’m going to work on improving the quality of the drafts this year so hopefully that will solve the main issue that hurts the drafts.
Let me know if you have any more ideas or comments.
Fantasy Football Starters is rolling out free mock draft software that comes with “computerized mock draft experts” that you can use in your league to fill out the draft or just practice or compete against.
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