One of the most interesting toys for draftniks is DrafTek's online simulator, which allows one to mimic the real draft.

I'm not entirely happy with their consensus Simulations lately; I just don't think an OG such as Herman Johnson is an appropriate choice for us no matter whether we have a need in that area or not. So, there are problems with the simulations even though they've taken steps to remedy these problems with the 'appropriateness' of selections.

Despite the rough edges, simulations replicate many aspects of the draft -- such as how competition affects availability of crucial positions in the 3-4 defense -- that aren't present in any other MOCKs. Those other MOCKs are merely a single individual's opinion of who every team should take, and necessarily suffer problems because of this.

The final and saving grace for the DrafTek simulations is that you can 'tweak' the inputs and see who it selects under the new criteria. You can also "grab or lockout" players (as I did with Herman Johnson) when there are problems with appropriateness or there's a player you think is undervalued and needs to be selected early.

Finally, my previous MOCKs using the DrafTek's Big Board didn't use the simulator itself but merely selected off their Big Board. It was less cumbersome that way and also allowed me to look at the choices rather than having the computer do that for me, but the supply & demand characteristics of a real draft weren't present.

And now the MOCK. (note: I'll be learning of these choices, for the most part, as you learn of them, too)

#12) - Rey Maualuga (ILB) - [REACH: -6, PRIORITY: 3]

#18) - Evander Hood (DE34) - [REACH: -14, PRIORITY: 2]

#48) - Josh Freeman (QB) - [VALUE: +20. PRIORITY: 4]

#79) - Kevin Barnes (CB) - [VALUE: +9. PRIORITY: 4]

#84) - Rashad Jennings (RB-F) - [VALUE: +1, PRIORITY: 5]

#114) - Roy Miller (DT34) - [REACH: -41,  PRIORITY: 3]

#149) - Cameron Morrah (TE) - [VALUE: +1, PRIORITY: 4]

#185) - Johnny Knox (WR-S) - [VALUE: +9, PRIORITY: 4]

#225) - Anthony Parker (OG) - [REACH: -6, PRIORITY: 4]

#235) - Jamarca Sanford (SS) - [REACH: -5, PRIORITY: 3]

Just a few quick comments -- I played with the settings in order to get less redundancy for some positions. For instance, I didn't want both an OG and an OC so I simply eliminated OC. This is hardly what we'll do in the draft but we may take one or the other, but I didn't have that choice in the simulation. I don't find that the priority settings mimic the richness of the actual decision making process so I was attempting to overcompensate for this flaw by eliminating some positions from consideration.

What's noticeable to me but won't be to others is how often player we would have chosen were taken shortly before our pick. And, in some cases, there are players we would have deemed worthy of a reach, but the simulation's Big Board BPA values had them placed too low. We can argue with this, and I can even go back a "grab" these players in the respective round, but I like the discipline that's being imposed.

Finally, what would be very useful for the sake of comparing simulations -- both your own and other member's -- is to record what as priority values you've used. I've shown the priorities next to the picks but they're quite arguable and the record is incomplete (for instance, I skipped WR-F but included WR-S). Priority settings may need to be twitched in order to arrive at desirable MOCKs so the best way of doing this may be try out settings and see which work best, a sort of backwards way of producing the proper priority settings.

I'll save further comments for the comments section.