What Makes A Good Mock Draft?

With the end of the NFL regular season and the first 20 picks solidified for the 2013 NFL draft, we begin the unofficial, official Mock Draft Open Season.  So, I thought, with the new year upon us, that it was a good time to think about what makes a good mock draft.

A good mock draft is really just a collection of 32 correct selections.  So, how should we grade a selection?

1. Matching the team and player at the correct pick number should yield the most points.
2. However, due to unforeseen trades, matching the team and player at another pick number is good as well.  Also, matching the pick number and player is good as well if there is a trade.
3. Matching a player plus or minus one pick number should get some consolation points since they had the player graded around the correct pick.

Now, on to the punishments.

1. If the mock draft has a team and player matched up and the real team passes on said player if he is available during the real draft, that is very bad.  That is the sign of a bad mock draft.
2. If the player mocked in the 1st round is actually not picked in the real 1st round, that is bad as well.

Other mock draft scoring algorithms do not go nearly this far. *cough* Huddle Report *cough*.  NFL mock draft grading is more intricate than just matching player to team.

NFL Mock Draft Database

Back in 2009, I had a dream.  I wanted to create a database of all the NFL mock drafts leading up to the NFL draft in April.  However, I didn't want to simple list the compilation of all the mocks, but I wanted to run some algorithms on the mocks as a group and try and determine the consensus of the mock drafts to help predict what player each team will pick in the first round.  Think of it as a Five Thirty Eight-style approach to NFL's mock draft season.  I created Mock Draft Master.
However, it didn't take long for the work to maintain such an algorithm and database overwhelmed me.  With a regular day to day job, I didn't have the time to make it as great as I wanted to.  So, it languished and I eventually had to terminate the hosting because it was costing me money and giving me only stress.
But, I haven't forgotten about that quest and since it has not been replicated anywhere on the web during this time, I decided to try to bring it back, but on Blogger this time and with a much smaller database.
I'm still crunching the numbers and getting the algorithm tuned up, but I should have some evaluation of the mock draft situation around the time the draft order is completely set.
Right now, I'm working on evaluating past mock drafts to see who had the best mocks and who I should trust the most going forward.  This should be an especially fascinating NFL draft period without a solid number 1 player so far, there is going to be no consensus until we get much closer to the draft.