Before he was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers general manager, Jason Licht was a scout and later a personnel executive who worked alongside three of the four winningest coaches in NFL history — Don Shula, Bill Belichick and Andy Reid.

At some point in his scouting career, Licht started reading the mock drafts from the local and national media outlets that cover the league, which have become as much a part of the run-up to the draft as combine 40-yard dashes and pro-day workouts.

“I mean, I’m a fan. If I wasn’t doing this, if I was working in the real world, I would be looking at all the mock drafts,” Licht said. “So just the fan in me likes to look at them, laugh at them sometimes, wonder why they’re saying that — we don’t like this player at all, why’s he up there? But it’s just kinda fun to watch.”

But as a talent evaluator, reading the mocks is more than just fun for Licht. It’s instructive.

The Bucs are among a large percentage of NFL teams that use media mock drafts as a piece of their evaluation puzzle while sizing up prospects and where they might go in the draft.

In polling front office members across the league, The Athletic found that 15 of 18 teams utilize mock drafts in varying degrees in their pre-draft process. One NFC general manager believes every team uses them to some extent — and speculated that teams that say they don’t are probably lying.

Cincinnati Bengals coach Zac Taylor said media mocks have been “in every draft room I’ve been in since 2012,” when Taylor first worked in the NFL as the Miami Dolphins’ quarterbacks coach.

“So it’s maybe new that it’s out there in the world,” Taylor added. “But it’s not new to what I’ve been exposed to since the early part of my career.”

According to several general managers, although teams don’t view media mock drafts as infallible, many use them as a tool to help them prepare for a wide range of scenarios that could unfold on draft night.

Several GMs — including Seattle’s John Schneider, the Los Angeles Rams’ Les Snead and Carolina’s Dan Morgan — said their analytics departments monitor media mock drafts, inputting them into in-depth databases that help with the monitoring of trends. The analytics officials — Snead good-naturedly referred to the Rams’ as “nerds” — then produce a report from those findings and relay them to the front office as another source of information.

Morgan said Panthers VP of football analytics Eric Eager pulls from about 20 different media mock drafts, although many of those outlets will do several iterations of their mocks. Officials from two other teams said members of their analytics departments feed 100 different mocks into their databases.

“Nowadays with the technology, you could probably scrape every mock that exists in the metaverse, which is pretty easy to do,” Snead said during an interview at the NFL’s league meeting. “Then I think at that point — and our nerds would be able to tell you better — OK, these are the most accurate ones and those you’ll pay attention (to) a little more.”

Licht said Tampa Bay employs the mocks as a kind of informal back check.

“We’ll take a look at a guy that we have very high on the board — and we trust our evaluations. But then every mock has him going in the sixth round and we’re like, ‘Well, either we know something that everybody else doesn’t or maybe every team feels the same way and just isn’t telling (anyone),’” Licht said. “Because I don’t tell anybody where we have guys on our board. So I don’t know how the mocks are made. But anyway, it kind of tells you, maybe we can get this guy a little bit later.”

Licht, whose scouting career began with Miami in 1995, raises an interesting dynamic in the mock draft world: How media members obtain the skinny on the prospects that teams are targeting. Snead suggested that in early mocks, reporters might be doing a favor for an agent by including that agent’s player prominently in a first-round mock.

But a longtime personnel executive for another NFC team said the flow of information also could be coming from team officials, who will give a draft nugget to a media member with an eye on getting favorable coverage that could help them get their next job.

However a team’s draft leanings get leaked, Snead said the mocks get more accurate the closer the calendar gets to draft weekend.

“At that point people want to be known as being accurate versus early in the down, it might be a little too early to even do a mock. It might be this particular person doing a favor for an agent,” Snead said. “But when it gets closer to the draft, it’s almost like, ‘OK, favors are out. I’m gonna go with what I think is gonna happen.’ And maybe at that point they’ve talked to a lot of people and have a better understanding of what might (happen). Maybe as people figure out medical issues, intangible issues, things like that.”

One AFC executive said that every general manager has relationships with members of the media, so they will at times check in with reporters to gain insight on what they have heard in their talks around the league leading up to the production of their mock drafts. However, as noted by others, those pieces of information are just used to help cross-check what NFL talent evaluators have gathered based on their own research.

While the Baltimore Ravens are among the teams that include mocks as part of their pre-draft process, head coach John Harbaugh indicated general manager Eric DeCosta also takes a proactive approach with polling media members.

“We look at those (mocks) pretty thoroughly. We’re looking at all the things that are published. I’m sure there are a lot of phone calls that are made too, especially by Eric. I don’t really do that,” Harbaugh told reporters at the league meeting. “I’m sure he does some polls himself. There’s so much information out there. It kind of gives you a pretty good view of how the draft is viewed.”

It’s also a common practice for multiple members of an NFL front office or scouting department to produce their own mock drafts, giving their teams a wide range of scenarios to prepare for, multiple talent evaluators said.

The Panthers use a draft simulator — similar to those available online — as a way for Morgan to work through the various scenarios that could unfold on draft night.

“Every time it gives me a different scenario. So I’m like, ‘OK, I’m on the clock. What am I doing?’ So I can practice it a little bit,” said Morgan, in his second year as Carolina’s GM. “I can trade back with another team. It gets really detailed. If I want to stop it and be Cleveland or someone like that, I can draft for them. You can do a lot of different things.”

The Eagles and Howie Roseman’s assistants use a draft simulator as part of their preparation process as well.

But some teams don’t put much stock into what media members are saying in their mocks. A high-ranking executive of a NFC team took a rather dismissive tone when asked about them, explaining that his front office is aware mock drafts exist and generate great interest among fans, but that’s about it.

“We’re aware of them, but we don’t feel any kind of way about them,” he said.

Even Snead occasionally wonders why the Rams should care about what the media think.

“Sometimes I go, ‘I don’t know why we’re really using that,’” he said. “Maybe it helps you make a decision of, in the second round, you might should pick this player over another one because maybe you can get that player in the third round. … But there is a strategy where you can go, ‘OK, this guy’s been mocking in the top 60 picks pretty consistently, so probably not getting to (the) third round.’”

But many teams embrace the mocks as another evaluation piece, and some now are adding another component to their analytics databases: betting odds on when players will be picked.

Schneider, the Seahawks’ longtime GM, said of Seattle’s analytics department: “They’re constantly doing it, so it’s everything. It’s every mock draft you could think of. Shoot, now it’s like what Vegas thinks, you know what I mean? Like, anything you can put in a pile to evaluate, they’re on it.”

Like Licht, Panthers coach Dave Canales likes reading the mocks to see “what the buzz is.” But Canales tries not to get too wrapped up in them.

“You’ve gotta be really disciplined about watching the film and try not to let all those things affect the value and the fit for the Panthers. … ‘Yes, but how does this guy fit in our scheme? How does he fit on our roster?’ And just kind of continue to bring it back to that,” Canales said.

“It’s really fascinating but you can drive yourself nuts, though. Like missing out (in mocks) on guys you love, like, ‘Ohhh, he’s gone.’ It’s fun, though.”