Hindsight is a cruel mistress in the world of professional football. If you go back and look at any NFL mock draft NFL 2018 version from April of that year, you’ll probably see something that looks like it was written by someone who had never actually watched a game of football in their entire life. But honestly? We all thought the same things. We thought Josh Allen was a "project" who might never complete a pass. We thought Sam Darnold was the safest bet since Andrew Luck. We were wrong. Almost everyone was.
The 2018 draft was the year of the quarterback. Everyone knew it. Everyone felt it. There were five guys—Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen, and Lamar Jackson—who were destined to change the league. Looking back, that draft class is a graveyard of "sure things" and a testament to how scouting is basically just educated guessing with a high-end suit on.
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The Chaos of the 2018 Quarterback Class
The Cleveland Browns started the madness. They had the first pick, and for months, the consensus was Darnold. Then, suddenly, it was Mayfield. Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay were scrambling. When the Browns actually took Baker, it felt like the world shifted. It was a gutsy move that sort of worked, then didn’t, then worked again for a different team later on.
But let’s talk about Josh Rosen. Remember "Nine Mistakes"? That’s what he called the teams that passed on him. He was the most "pro-ready" guy in the NFL mock draft NFL 2018 cycle. Experts loved his mechanics. They loved his footwork. Fast forward a few years, and he’s been on more practice squads than I’ve had hot dinners. It’s wild how much we overvalue "polish" over raw, terrifying talent.
Then there’s Lamar Jackson. The disrespect was real. Bill Polian, a Hall of Fame executive, literally suggested he should move to wide receiver. Think about that. A guy who would go on to win multiple MVPs was being told to run slant routes because he didn't fit the "prototype." Most mock drafts had him sliding to the end of the first round, and for once, the mocks were right—but for all the wrong reasons. The Ravens stole him at 32, and the league hasn't been the same since.
Why Scouting Reports Failed So Hard
Scouting is hard. Really hard. But 2018 was a special kind of failure for the "experts." The obsession with completion percentage haunted Josh Allen. He came out of Wyoming with a 56% completion rate. In every NFL mock draft NFL 2018, he was the guy with the "cannon arm but no map."
People ignored the context. He was playing in Laramie, Wyoming, in the wind, with teammates who wouldn't start for most Power Five schools. The Buffalo Bills saw the ceiling. Everyone else saw the floor. It turns out the ceiling was higher than the Burj Khalifa.
- Baker Mayfield: High floor, "moxie," decent accuracy.
- Sam Darnold: The USC pedigree, "prototypical" size, turnover prone (which we ignored).
- Josh Allen: The "project" who broke the mold.
- Josh Rosen: The "pure passer" who couldn't find a rhythm.
- Lamar Jackson: The athlete who was always a better QB than people admitted.
We get blinded by traits. We see a 6'4" guy who looks like he was built in a lab and we ignore that he can't read a Cover 2 defense. Or we see a "small" guy like Baker and worry about his height, even though he's been slinging it over giant linemen his whole life.
The Non-QBs Who Actually Saved the Draft
While we were all arguing about which 21-year-old kid should lead a franchise, some of the best players in the league were slipping through the cracks or being taken right under our noses. Saquon Barkley went second overall. That was a huge debate. "Don't take a RB that high," they said. Well, they were probably right from a value standpoint, but Saquon was—and is—a freak of nature.
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Then you have Quenton Nelson. He's a guard. Nobody gets excited about guards in an NFL mock draft NFL 2018 discussion. But the Colts took him at 6, and he immediately became a gold standard. It’s funny how we obsess over the "flashy" picks while the guys who actually win games in the trenches get relegated to the "boring" section of the write-up.
Roquan Smith, Bradley Chubb, Minkah Fitzpatrick. These guys were stalwarts. Minkah is a great example of a team (the Dolphins) not knowing what they had and the Steelers swooping in to reap the rewards. It shows that the draft doesn't end on Thursday night; it’s a living, breathing thing that evolves through trades and scheme fits.
The Josh Allen "Project" Myth
I want to circle back to Allen because he’s the ultimate "I told you so" for both sides. If you hated him in 2018, you had the stats to prove he’d bust. If you loved him, you had the "eye test."
The reality is that Josh Allen is an outlier. You can't use him as a blueprint for every big-armed kid coming out of the Mountain West. He worked harder than almost anyone to rebuild his throwing motion. Most "projects" stay projects. They don't become superstars. That’s the danger of looking at an old NFL mock draft NFL 2018 and thinking, "Oh, we should just take the guy with the biggest arm every time." No. Take the guy with the biggest arm who also has the work ethic of a coal miner.
What This Means for Future Drafting
If we learned anything from 2018, it's that "pro-ready" is a trap. It often just means "this guy has reached his ceiling already." You want the guy who is still climbing.
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Look at the difference between the Jets and the Bills. The Jets took the "safe" guy in Darnold. He had no help, bad coaching, and eventually saw ghosts. The Bills took the "risk" in Allen, built a literal fortress around him, and gave him Stefon Diggs. Success in the NFL is 50% scouting and 50% not being a dysfunctional mess of an organization.
Lessons from the 2018 Revisionist History
- Stop overvaluing completion percentage in college. Context matters. Who are they throwing to? Are they under pressure on every snap?
- Character and "Moxie" are cool, but can they play? Baker had the attitude, but the physical limitations eventually caught up to him in Cleveland.
- The "Safety" of a prospect is an illusion. There is no such thing as a safe pick in the first round. Every single one is a gamble.
- Scheme fit is everything. Would Lamar Jackson have succeeded in a rigid, old-school offense? Probably not. The Ravens built the offense around him. That's the secret sauce.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Aspiring Scouts
If you're looking at current mock drafts and trying to apply the lessons from the NFL mock draft NFL 2018 era, here is how you should actually evaluate talent:
- Look for the "Elite" Trait: Every superstar has one thing they do better than everyone else. For Lamar, it was twitchiness. For Allen, it was raw power. If a guy is just "good" at everything, he might just be average in the NFL.
- Ignore the Helmet: Don't draft a USC quarterback just because he's a USC quarterback. Evaluate the human being inside the jersey, not the logo on the side of it.
- Watch the Third Down Tape: Anyone can look good on first-and-10. What do they do when the blitz is coming and they need six yards? That's where you find the real players.
- Check the Supporting Cast: Did the QB make his receivers better, or were the receivers bailed out by the QB? In 2018, people thought Darnold was carrying USC. In reality, he was struggling despite some decent weapons.
The 2018 draft will go down as one of the most fascinating social experiments in sports history. It pitted the "analytics" crowd against the "old school scouts," and in the end, both sides were kind of right and kind of wrong. It reminds us that no matter how many spreadsheets we have or how many hours of tape we watch, these are still just kids playing a game. And kids are unpredictable.
If you want to get better at predicting the next big thing, stop looking for the next Sam Darnold and start looking for the guy everyone is afraid to draft. That’s usually where the gold is buried. The 2018 draft wasn't a failure of scouting; it was a failure of imagination. We couldn't imagine a world where Josh Allen was accurate or Lamar Jackson was a pocket passer. Now, we can't imagine a world without them.