FOXBORO -- When thinking about Bill Belichick and the Patriots, some may think the organization is opposed to mock drafts, but when speaking at his pre-draft press conference Friday morning, the coach shared it does actually use them when preparing for the draft.
The organization sometimes conducts them internally to try and project who might be available when it is time to select.
"Sometimes we do that, yeah. Sometimes we do that," Belichick said. "It's really more of a — I'd say sometimes it just sparks a conversation. We might internally say, 'OK, how about Player A and Player B? Player B and Player C? And if you did a mock draft where kind of each guy has a team and, 'OK, it's your turn. You pick this.' And now you look at the board, it's our turn to pick, and 'Here's a scenario we hadn't really thought about.' We hadn't really pictured that this guy would be there.
"So, that kind of can [simulate] some — again, we don't know what the other teams are going to do. We don't know what we're going to do. Many of them probably don't know what they're going to do, either. It depends on what happens in front of them. But, again, it's just an exercise to just kind of complete the process of preparation. That's the way it is on draft day, too. There's a lot of time you're sitting there looking at players that, 'I thought this player would be there, and he's long gone.' Or 'I didn't think this player would be there, and he's still there.'
"One of the problems with that is if you haven't done the work on a player and he's still there, then you really don't know the player as well as you should, because if you thought he wouldn't be there, that puts you in a little bit of a dilemma. You're kind of in the unknown, which is where you don't want to be. It's hard enough when you think you know what you're doing. It's even harder when you're kind of guessing. You just didn't anticipate this. That's kind of the perks of the mock draft. We don't sit around and do it all day, but we do it as an exercise to kind of [simulate]."
Having two first-round picks this year, the Patriots may need to conduct more of these internal mock drafts than usual because what happens ahead of them will impact who they pick.
