First and foremost, I appreciate anyone who spends their money to read what I put out, so thanks for your support.
There's a lot I could say here, but I'll try to keep it as brief as possible. I generally have a decent grasp of who is going to go where, whether I am higher or lower on a player. Especially on day one of the draft, there weren't really many surprises that caught me off guard (only one big one that I recall), so immediate comparison isn't really that worthwhile as it's something I have (sort of) already done to ensure I feel good about my list. Basically, if a player is going to go 12th and I have them 30th or vice versa, I try to be as sure as possible of what that discrepancy is signaling. As rounds go on, things definitely deviate more, as decisions in the mid-to-late rounds become way more subjective as the talent level tapers off and there are lots of different factors at play.
As for who's doing well, it's great to see players off to hot starts, but my list is all about how I think they will be 2-3 years from now. Maybe I end up being right, or maybe I end up being wrong to have guys higher or lower, but it'll just take time to see how things go. I did spend a lot of time last month reviewing the 07s (the first year I started) to see who has developed better or worse than I expected and what I can learn from that. While it's still early, enough time has passed to see if things are progressing as I had hoped or if someone is outperforming my expectations, and just trying to improve myself by revisiting players, but it's still a wait and see for the 08s for sure.
I could talk your ears off on the differences between my list and what happens on draft day, but the thing I say a lot when people ask is we don't have the benefit of knowing what teams' lists looked like. That player Team X took 12th? They may have had them ranked 4th. The player Team Y took 30th? It's possible all the other 19 teams had them way later. The player Team Z took 200th, maybe they had them 80th and knew they could snag them later as they were undervalued for whatever reason. Obviously, these are potentially extreme examples, but it is illustrative of how comparing a public list's rankings to the draft results can have its flaws as we don't know the full picture.
Final thing as it likely pertains to your son's case - I'll just say I spend a lot of time challenging my own process as I know how my work can be interpreted and potentially give false expectations. Should I really be going 100% on ranking players I'd draft, even if I know they may go later? Should I rank kids that I would never personally select that I know teams will take? There's no right answer here, and finding the right balance as a public-facing service can be tricky and something that's always on my mind. (Turns out I was not brief at all)
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