10 years of consensus big board accuracy or lack thereof
The consensus big board can be viewed here going back to 2016, meaning that we have ten years of big board data and actual drafts to compare. The consensus big board back in 2016 only used about 50 total boards/rankings/drafts. The consensus big board in 2025 used 199 Big Board(s), 1527 1st round mock draft(s), and 1533 team based mock draft(s). In theory with more total rankings the accuracy should be better in 2025 than it was in 2016. The only times that every player in the top seven went in the top 7 were 2022 and 2025. The first “reach” in each draft was
- 2016 4th pick Ezekiel Elliott
- 2017 5th Corey Davis
- 2018 3rd Sam Darnold
- 2019 4th Clelin Ferrell
- 2020 4th Andrew Thomas
- 2021 4th Kyle Pitts
- 2022 9th Charles Cross
- 2023 6th Paris Johnson
- 2024 5th Joe Alt
- 2025 8th Tetairoa McMillan
Of course, each reach can be justified by the team that made it based on their board and their team needs.
With hindsight we can see that some of those guys above were indeed “overdrafted”. Corey Davis never made the Pro Bowl and was out of the league by 2023. Sam Darnold was a terrible bust until last season when he had his Case Keenum moment. Clelin Ferrell has never even been a decent starter in the NFL. Andrew Thomas has yet to earn any post-season honors other than second team AP AllPro. In his best season, 2022, he was the fifth best OT in the league according to SISdatahub.com. So maybe he isn’t a bust. Charles Cross has been a below average or average LT so far in his career. Paris Johnson was the 49th best OT in the league in 2024.
In terms of highly ranked guys on the consensus big board who “fell” ten or more spots in the first round, there have been 16.
- Emmanuel Ogbah who was the 32nd pick in 2016
- Malik Hooker the 15th pick in 2017
- Calvin Ridley the 26th pick in 2018
- Garrett Bradbury, Jeffery Simmons, Johnathan Abram and Kaleb McGary in 2019
- Patrick Queen the 28th pick in 2020
- Odafe Oweh the 31st pick in 2021
- George Karlaftis the 30th pick in 2022
- Myles Murphy the 28th pick in 2023
- Jordan Morgan and Xavier Legette in 2024
- Donovan Jackson, Tyleik Williams and Jihaad Campbell in 2025.
If you want to see a graphical representation of all of the picks in the top 64, that is below.
Zooming in on the top 20 we get this.
The takeaway from all of this is that even the consensus big board, with loads of data like they had in 2025, is wrong more often than it was right, even in the top 10. Shadeur Sanders falling to 57th round doesn’t help the accuracy for 2025, but even removing him, the big board was still fairly inaccurate in 2025.