Donkey

Nobody’s harder on Peter King than the Oceanliner, so you know it must be something impressive for me to compliment him. But like I have said many times, even about people I generally don’t like, you have to give credit where credit is due. And with respect to the NFL Draft, King absolutely freakin nailed it in his Mock that came out last Thursday in Sports Illustrated. I didn’t have a chance to look at his Mock Draft until the Tuesday after the weekend, and was shocked at how accurate it was considering a) he’s Peter King and 2) what a crapshoot predicting the draft is. King’s prognostication of the top 15 is especially impressive. Let’s take a look at the results, starting with the Top 5:

King’s Top 5 (actual pick in parentheses)
Matt Stafford (Stafford)
Jason Smith (Smith)
Tyson Jackson (Jackson)
Dirty Sanchez (Curry)
Aaron Curry (Sanchez)

King nailed the top 3, and flip-flopped 4 and 5. The Jackson pick was his best call, especially since he wrote this on Tuesday and I didn’t hear the Jackson-at-3-to-the-Chiefs hype until much later in the week. He also gets some credit for the Stafford pick, because the Lions didn’t sign him until Friday, and again, King wrote this on Tuesday. Moving Sanchez and Jackson into the top 5 was gutsy, but he was right about both (even though he had Seattle taking Sanchez).

King’s 6-10
BJ Raji (Andre Smith)
Jeremy Maclin (Darius Heyward-Bey)
Eugene Monroe (Monroe)
Andre Smith (Raji)
Mchael Crabtree (Crabtree)

King pinned two of these tails right on the donkey, and had Raji and Smith flipped. He was the only person I saw that had Crabtree falling all the way to the 49ers at 10 (which I am ecstatic about, by the way). The best pick here was King accurately predicting that the Raiders would pass on the slower Crabtree and go after a speed demon wide receiver with the 7th pick, noting “longball loving Al Davis usually looks for speed at the wideout position.” He just picked the wrong one, and honestly, no one had Heyward-Bey in the top 20, much less the top 10. Incredibly, King picked 9 of the players drafted in the top 10 (with 5 dead on, 2 one away and two flipped that were 3 away), which again is insane considering how much bullshit NFL teams sling before the draft.

King’s 11-15
Aaron Maybin (Maybin)
Brian Orakpo (Knoshon Moreno)
Robert Ayers (Orakpo)
Malcolm Jenkins (Jenkins)
Brian Cushing (Cushing)

Being this accurate this far down in a Mock Draft is astonishing: 3 dead on picks and 1 one off. At 13 we see King’s “worst” showing of the day so far, but Ayers still went 5 picks later at 18. King not only nailed which of the 3 USC linebackers would go first, but got the exact pick and team right. He also tabbed the order of all 3 Trojan ‘backers correctly, saying it would be Cushing then Mathews then Maualuga, which it was.

Other good first round calls were the Bucs taking Josh Freeman, only being 1 pick off on how far Percy Harvin would drop, and having Everette Brown falling out of the first round altogether (I saw some drafts with Brown in the top 10).

King didn’t get any picks from 16 to 32 exactly right, but did have 10 of those players going somewhere in that range. All in all, King was a stellar 26 of 32 in picking first round talent, and all 6 guys he was wrong about in the first round went in the top half of the second. An amazing performance all around. Peter King, the Oceanliner salutes you, even if just for a week.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go listen to some Sugar Ray on Fresh FM.