The NFL Draft starts in 16 short days, and as is the tradition, piles upon piles of NFL-related blogs, sites and other digital outposts are trying to figure who drafts who and where. In other words, the mock drafts have taken over the football realm — well, as long as Donovan McNabb doesn’t get traded. That little fact disrupts all that fun NFL Draft talk. Nevertheless, the mocking the upcoming draft has taken on a life of its own, something a quick, little Google search reveals.

Granted, those 2 million-plus sites don’t all have mock drafts going, but the point remains: There are a lot resources out there who think they can predict the draft. The question is, how accurate are these experts?

Before we do a little bit of research, here are some of the more popular mock drafts:

NFL.com with Mike Mayock
Mel Kiper and Todd McShay at ESPN
Draft Insiders
Walter Football

Plus thousands and thousands of team blogs and fan sites do the same. But which one is the most reliable?

Of the national resources, it seems Mel Kiper and Todd McShay, two analysts who exist solely for the NFL Draft, are the most derided. In fact, when you look at the public’s reaction, mixed with some insider information, you have to wonder why ESPN flaunts these two so much. Kiper, I understand. His personality fits and he’s been around, meaning he has the “trust” of his viewers. McShay, on the other hand, seems like he’s always trying to prove himself.

On the other hand, Mike Mayock gets nothing but love for his work — or at least its accuracy. Of course, being privy to all the insider information will have such benefits, but even Mayock hasn’t performed the best, even with all his knowledge.

One name that isn’t being mentioned is Mike Band and his DraftAce.com site. Evidently, Band has been one of the most accurate prognosticators in the business, and guess what? He’s just a college student (or was when he started) and doesn’t have the same access folks like Kiper, McShay or Mayock do.

Apparently, most of the information is out there. You just have to know where to apply it at.

Speaking of applying NFL knowledge, another writer that gets respect as a mock draft-er is Rick Gosselin of DallasNews.com. Lots of draftniks are very high on Gosselin’s ability to evaluate talent, and apply it to the team that needs/wants it the most.

Between those I mentioned and the upteen million pages of Google results to sift through, if you can’t find an NFL Mock Draft that makes you comfortable, you aren’t looking hard enough.