THE POWER RANK

  • About
    • About The Power Rank
    • Start Here
    • Contact
  • Predictions
    • Games
    • March Madness
  • Content
    • Must Read
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • March Madness Book
  • Rankings
    • College Basketball
    • NFL
    • College Football
    • MLB
    • Cluster Luck
    • CFB yards per play
    • World Soccer/Football
  • Members
    • My Account
    • Login
    • Become a member
    • COVID-19 Policy
  • Log in

Evaluating a wisdom of crowds prediction for the 2017 NFL draft

By Dr. Ed Feng 1 Comment

Last season, I made a wisdom of crowds predictor for the 2017 NFL by combining the predictions of 15 different mock drafts.

If a mock draft predicted a player to go first, the player earned 32 points. If a mock draft predicted a player to go second, the player earned 31 points, and so on down to 1 point for the last pick of the first round.

The players got ranked by points to make the wisdom of crowds prediction. You can get the full list of predictions here.

How did the wisdom of crowds predictor do compared to the individual mock drafts?

Error for each NFL draft prediction

To evaluate each draft predictor, I evaluated the distance from predicted to actual draft spot for each player. For example, Mitch Trubisky went 2nd in the draft, so the wisdom of crowds prediction of 8th has a distance of 6. Jonathan Allen went 17th despite a prediction of 3rd, which gives a still positive distance of 14. The total distance for all 32 predicted players gives an error for a draft prediction.

I tracked each player compared to his actual draft slot for the first two rounds. In a few cases, a predicted player got drafted outside these top two rounds. To evaluate the distance, I assigned draft slot of 65 (first pick of the third round), plus a penalty of 3. Only 7 of the mock drafts had a prediction outside the first two rounds, and they are denoted by a * in the list below.

Here are how the 15 mock drafts stacked up compared to wisdom of crowds.

1. Sporting News, 222
2. The Power Rank Wisdom of Crowds, 239
3. Todd McShay, 249
4. CBS, 259*
5. Daniel Jeremiah, 263
6. Mel Kiper, 265
7. Drafttek, 266*
8. Lance Zierlein, 277
9. Charlie Campbell, 290
10. Sports Illustrated, 291*
11. SB Nation, 295
12. Fox, 306
13. Newsday, 310*
14. Cris Collinsworth, 344*
15. Walter Cherepinsky, 405*
16. Pro Football Focus, 431*

I took this data on April 19, 2017. The predictions may have changed for some of these mock drafts as authors made updates before the first round of the NFL draft on April 27, 2017.

The wisdom of crowds predictor did better than any constituent mock draft except for one: Vinnie Iyer at Sporting News.

In future years, I plan to use the full draft to evaluate the mock drafts, not only the first two rounds with an arbitrary penalty for picking a player outside of these rounds. In most cases, this better method would make the error larger for the mock drafts with a *.

Filed Under: National Football League, NFL Draft

Trackbacks

  1. Predicting the 2018 NFL draft with wisdom of crowds says:
    April 24, 2018 at 12:54 pm

    […] ranked based on total points, and this rank becames his predicted spot in the draft. In 2017, this wisdom of crowds model performed better than all but one of the constituent mock […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Predictions from Ed Feng

I use my Stanford Ph.D. in applied math to make football and March Madness predictions.

To get a sample of my best American football predictions and March Madness cheat sheet, sign up for my free email newsletter.

Enter your email and click on "Sign up now!"

Popular Articles

  • How to win your NCAA tournament pool
  • The ultimate guide to predictive college basketball analytics
  • How to predict interceptions in the NFL
  • Accurate football predictions with linear regression
  • The surprising truth about passing and rushing in the NFL
  • Football analytics resource guide
  • The Reason You Can’t Avoid The Curse of Small Sample Size
  • The essential guide to predictive CFB rankings
  • How computer rankings make you smarter about sports
  • How to win your college football bowl pool
  • Do you make these 3 mistakes with college football statistics?
  • The Top 10 Things to Know About The Power Rank’s Methods
  • 5 insights from academic research on predicting world soccer/football matches

Recent Articles

  • Podcast: Julian Packer on modeling and betting props
  • Podcast: Colin Davy on analytics for The Masters and Jeopardy
  • Podcast: Jordan Sperber on College Basketball Analytics and Strategy
  • Member: Final Four analysis
  • Members: Sweet Sixteen analysis for March 27-28, 2021

© 2021 The Power Rank Inc., All rights reserved.

About, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy

Get a sample of my best football predictions

While I usually save my best predictions for paying members of the site, I offer a sample in my weekly email newsletter.


To get this service, sign up for my free email newsletter.


Enter your email and click on "Sign up now!"

No thanks, I'll make predictions without data and analytics.

{"cookieName":"wBounce","isAggressive":false,"isSitewide":true,"hesitation":"","openAnimation":false,"exitAnimation":false,"timer":"","sensitivity":"","cookieExpire":"","cookieDomain":"","autoFire":"","isAnalyticsEnabled":true}
  • About
    • About The Power Rank
    • Start Here
    • Contact
  • Predictions
    • Games
    • March Madness
  • Content
    • Must Read
    • Blog
    • Podcast
    • March Madness Book
  • Rankings
    • College Basketball
    • NFL
    • College Football
    • MLB
    • Cluster Luck
    • CFB yards per play
    • World Soccer/Football
  • Members
    • My Account
    • Login
    • Become a member
    • COVID-19 Policy