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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Jess Root

Cardinals read mock drafts in preparing for the NFL draft

With less than a week until the 2023 NFL draft begins, we have all read scores of mock drafts. Many people in NFL front offices and locker rooms will make fun at the many projections, often laughing at how inaccurate they are.

However, new Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort uses mock drafts.

Perhaps he doesn’t use the projections from Cards Wire, but Ossenfort admitted that mock drafts are all part of the process of preparing for the actual draft.

“At this point is actually when we are going to turn our attention to some of those mock drafts and just take a look at them and start walking through some scenarios that may or may not happen,” Ossenfort told reporters at the team’s predraft press conference on Friday. “Some of those mock drafts are accurate, some of them are crazy, but in all honesty, the crazy ones might turn out to be right. We don’t know.

“I think really the draft is just like in a game, it’s about reacting to what happens because we do not know what’s going to happen. It’s fun to consider and the mocks help us with some of those scenarios like, ‘Oh man, I didn’t consider that. Well, it might happen, so if that happens then we’ll do this.’ They help us in that process.”

Ossenfort and his staff do not come up with their own mock drafts. They use other mock drafts from other outlets.

Relying on some of the more well-known insiders, who get inside information from teams, gives the Cardinals some knowledge as to what other teams are thinking.

So basically the next mock draft you read might be the same Ossenfort has read.

Listen to the latest from Cards Wire’s Jess Root on his podcast, Rise Up, See Red. Subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify.

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