Fantasy Football Live Mock Draft Sites
The Mock draft can be a valuable tool for preparing for your fantasy football draft. It’s not just seeing where certain players tend to fall, but getting “real” drafting experience and testing out any draft theories. We’re taking a look at a handful of quality sites where you can participate in free live mock fantasy football drafts online.
Fantasy Football Calculator
This site has been a favorite of mine for several years now. It’s easy to get started and you don’t need to register or provide an email address unless you want to save and analyze your mock drafts.
New drafts begin literally every few minutes. You can select from 8-14 team leagues and all drafts are 15 rounds. You also have the option to select standard format or PPR/Flex leagues. During the draft, you can create watch lists and sort your list by dragging and dropping. You can chat with other drafters with an included chat box.
Drafts are usually pretty full with live participants, especially as you get closer to the season.
Try a mock draft at fantasyfootballcalculator.com.
If you wish to bail part way through the draft, be cool to your fellow drafters and enable computer control. Otherwise, you will take the full 90 seconds to make each pick and slow down the draft for everyone else. (This advice applies for any mock draft)
ESPN
Drafts begin about every 5 minutes and you have the choice of auction or snake style drafts. You are required to log in with your Facebook, Twitter, or ESPN account, and you’ll need to have Flash installed. You get 45 seconds per pick, so the drafts usually move pretty rapidly.
The layout of the draft room is very visually appealing, and can be initially a little overwhelming. Player rankings also include statistics. Drop and drop players into the player queue as you prepare to make your selection. You can select autopick, but once you do so you can no longer search for players or add them to the queue. (unless you remove the autopick function)
A very strong choice, especially if you already have an ESPN account. Results are automatically emailed to you when the draft is complete.
Participate in a live mock draft at ESPN.com.
Yahoo! Mock Drafts
You’ll need to sign in with your Yahoo account (or create one). Next, go the the Yahoo! Draft Lobby and select a draft and position. Flash is required.
As with the ESPN Mock Draft, when you select Autopick you can’t add players to the queue, filter by position, or click on links to read the stats. To do so, you’ll need to turn manual draft back on. Yahoo is another solid choice, especially if you already participate in Yahoo leagues.
Mock drafts at Yahoo.com.
NFL.com
Drafts start every minute and are all 10 team drafts using the default NFL-Managed league settings. The draft application is Flash based and you can participate in unlimited drafts. You need to login using Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, or NFL.com account.
During the draft you can sort by position, NFL rank, or your own rankings. You get 90 seconds to make each pick, so drafts can be sluggish if you have drafters taking a lot of time. You can select autodraft and still add players to the queue, filter through the rankings, etc.
Try a mock fantasy draft at nfl.com
Other Mock Draft Sites
CBSSports.com
CBSSports.com requires you to log in with your site credentials or with Facebook or Twitter. You can chat with others during the draft and get results emailed to you and keep a history of draft results. Drafts are available in flex and standard type leagues. One major downside is that the the drafts rooms where considerably more empty than some of the other league manager sites.
Try a mock draft at cbssports.com
Mock Draft Central
This one requires free registration, but limits you to one mock draft per day and 3 per week. You have the option to purchase a membership for $4.99 / month or $19.99 / year which gives you access to unlimited mock drafts, custom reports, and ability to participate in “more competitive” mock drafts.
Check out mockdraftcentral.com
fantasyfootballxtreme.com
Easy to join with no registration required. Just pick a name, an available draft and jump in. The problem is, we didn’t find alot of other folks joining drafts. Our mock draft had zero other live drafters. The computer picks instantly so if you have no other live players are there drafting, you have almost no time to digest the picks.
The layout is a little too simplistic. Small windows make it tougher for you to find players and there is no search feature. This is one to avoid unless other drafts are swamped and you don’t want to wait.
Overview
We found that Fantasy Football Calculator, ESPN, Yahoo, and NFL.com were all quality free choices for live online mock drafts. The first 3 mock draft tools have more flexibility in draft options (scoring system, # of teams, etc.) while NFL.com limits you to 10 standard format. We continue to lean toward Fantasy Football Calculator for it’s ease of use and the fact that you can jump in quickly and draft without login or registration. It is also not a Flash based system, so you can use it on your iPad. For auction style drafts you’ll want to try ESPN.
by 