Guides · Draft prep
How to use mock drafts to actually prepare
Most mock drafts teach you nothing. Here is how to run them with a purpose: test your slot, rehearse the turn, and find the rounds where your board breaks.
A mock with no question is just clicking
The common failure is treating a mock as a dress rehearsal for one specific roster. You will not get that roster. What transfers is the shape of the board: which rounds thin out, where the tier breaks land relative to your turns, and how a run changes what is available. Go into each mock with one question you want answered, and stop when you have the answer.
Mock from the slot you actually have
If your draft order is set, every mock from a different slot is practicing someone else's draft. If the order is not set yet, run three: an early slot, a middle slot, and a turn slot. You are learning three different gap sizes, and the gap is what decides how much risk each "best available" pick carries.
Rehearse the turn, not the first round
Round one is nearly automatic — take the best player. The picks that decide your season are the back-to-back selections at the turn and the round where two positions run dry at once. Set your mocks up so you get repetitions on rounds three through seven, and let the autodraft handle the rest if the tool allows it.
Log where your board broke
After each mock, note the first pick where you had no good option. That round is your real weakness, and it usually means a tier emptied while you were looking elsewhere. Two or three mocks in, the same round will keep appearing — that is the one to plan around, not the one where you got a name you liked.
Mock rooms behave differently from real ones
Public mocks are full of autodrafters and people testing a strategy they would never run for money, so they hug ADP more tightly than a real league and produce fewer runs. Treat mock ADP as a floor for chaos, not a forecast. Your actual league will drift further, which is exactly what makes reading the live board more valuable than reading a pre-draft list.
Practice against a live board
The demo draft runs a simulated room you can watch runs form in, and the free analyzer scores how far a real draft has drifted from ADP. Between them you can rehearse the two skills that matter: seeing a run one pick early, and pricing what will still be there at your next turn.