On The Clock NFL Mock Draft Simulator Tutorial

The On The Clock NFL Mock Draft Simulator puts you in control of any NFL franchise and lets you experience the draft exactly how you want it. Run quick one-round mocks or deep seven-round simulations with trades, custom prospect rankings, and multi-team drafting. No signup required to start drafting.

How the Setup Works

Select Your Team

Click any NFL team logo to draft from that team's real draft position. The simulator loads that franchise's current picks, roster needs, and pick order. Premium users can select multiple teams and control them all in the same draft.

Number of Rounds

Choose between 1 and 7 rounds. One round is great for quick scenarios. Seven rounds gives you the full NFL draft experience with late-round value picks and developmental prospects.

Big Boards

A Big Board is a ranked list of every draft prospect from #1 through the entire class, regardless of position. Your Big Board determines how players are ordered in the Available Players panel and how the simulator scores your picks. Multiple analyst boards are available, and each one produces a different draft because prospect rankings vary across evaluators.

CPU Draft Preference

Player Ranking mode makes CPU teams prioritize the highest-ranked player available regardless of need. Team Needs mode weighs roster holes heavily — a player filling a team's top need gets a 5x multiplier while non-need positions get a 0.2x penalty. Team Needs mode produces more realistic positional runs and creates opportunities for prospects to slide.

Draft Speed

Randomness

The Randomness slider controls how strictly CPU teams follow their draft logic. At Strict (0), teams follow rankings closely and drafts are predictable. At Chaotic (100), teams frequently deviate, creating wildly different outcomes every time.

Draft Variance

Draft Variance controls how many top-ranked players the CPU considers for each pick. A Tight pool means teams only look at the very best players available, resulting in chalk-like, predictable picks. A Wide pool lets teams look much deeper, allowing sleepers and surprises — especially in later rounds where real NFL teams are throwing darts.

The pool size also scales by round. Early first-round picks consider a small group of elite prospects, while rounds 5–7 open up dramatically to reflect how unpredictable late-round drafting really is.

Computer Big Board

By default, CPU teams use the same Big Board you selected. With this setting you can assign them a different board — or set it to Random so each CPU team drafts from a randomly assigned analyst board. This creates realistic disagreement between teams on prospect rankings, leading to more varied and surprising drafts.

Trade Frequency

Controls how often CPU teams propose trades during the draft.

During the Draft

Draft Tracker

The Draft Tracker shows live results for the current round — which players each team selected, remaining team needs, and how many rounds are left. Use it to anticipate positional runs and decide whether your target will still be available.

Available Players

All players still on the board, ranked by your selected Big Board. Position filters let you narrow to specific positions. When it's your turn, click the Draft button next to any player to make your pick.

Controls

Start Round begins each round's auto-draft. Pause / Resume lets you stop and study the board mid-round. Propose Trade opens the trade interface for premium users.

Trades

Trades use the Jimmy Johnson Trade Value Chart, the same system NFL front offices reference for evaluating draft pick trades. Every pick has a point value, and trade packages must match or exceed the target pick's value.

Inbound Trades (CPU Offers You)

CPU teams will occasionally offer to trade up to your position. Offers are most common in rounds 1 through 3 from teams picking 3 to 16 spots behind you. Each offer includes intel on why the team wants to trade up — whether a prospect is sliding past their board ranking, they're trying to jump ahead of a divisional rival, or they see a closing window on an elite talent at a key position of need. Inbound offers always include multiple picks so you're getting a real package, not just a lateral swap.

Outbound Trades (You Propose)

You can also initiate trades yourself. Click Propose Trade, select the team you want to trade with, then choose which picks to send and receive. As you build your offer, a live acceptance probability updates in real time showing how likely the CPU is to accept. The evaluation considers the Jimmy Johnson chart value of each pick, how badly the other team needs their remaining early-round capital, and what elite prospects they could draft at their current position.

For one-for-one pick swaps, the outcome is always deterministic — the objectively better pick always wins, no randomness involved. For multi-pick packages, acceptance is probability-based with a realistic sigmoid curve. Sending more value than fair price pushes acceptance toward 100%, while lowball offers get flatly rejected.

Force Trade

Premium users can hit the Force Trade button when they're on the clock to make a CPU team come to them with an offer. The first forced trade produces a realistic, high-quality offer from the team with the most urgency to move up. Each subsequent forced trade progressively relaxes the constraints — the search widens to more teams, value thresholds drop, and packages become less favorable. A warning appears after two forced trades letting you know the offers are getting worse. This lets you always keep the draft moving, but rewards patience with better deals.

Free Daily Trade

Even without a premium membership, every user gets one free draft per day with full trade access — both inbound CPU offers and outbound proposals. This resets each calendar day, so you can experience the complete trade system before deciding to upgrade.

In Team Needs mode, CPU teams require you to overpay by at least 100 chart points, simulating tougher negotiations. Premium users controlling multiple teams can trade between their own teams freely.

Draft Grades

After your final pick, your draft receives a letter grade from A+ to F based on two components:

Value Score

Measures whether you got good value with each pick. Drafting a player ranked higher than your pick position is a steal. Drafting a player ranked lower is a reach. Evaluated using the Jimmy Johnson chart.

Needs Score

Measures how well you addressed roster needs. Filling your #1 need earns full credit, while lower-priority needs earn progressively less due to exponential decay weighting.

Each pick also gets its own letter grade and breakdown showing slide delta, Jimmy Johnson chart value comparison, need priority, and overall pick quality.

Tips for Better Drafts

Watch for positional runs. If three cornerbacks go in a row, remaining CBs will slide. Use the Draft Tracker to spot trends and exploit them.

Trade before starting the round. Once the round starts, CPU picks happen fast. If you see a target slipping, trade up before clicking Start Round.

Use Team Needs mode for realism. It creates realistic positional drafting with more trade-up opportunities compared to Player Ranking mode.

Adjust Randomness for variety. Increase randomness to see wildly different outcomes. Lower it for predictable, repeatable results.

Try different Big Boards. Switching boards dramatically changes which players are available at your pick. A player ranked #15 on one board might be #30 on another.

Use Redraft to iterate. Click Redraft after finishing to return to setup with your previous configuration loaded. Run the same setup multiple times and compare results.