A networked control system is a system that uses communication networks to connect the various parts. However, network delay affects the performance and stability of the networked control system. In order to eliminate the impact of network delay on the control system, an improved SCA-BP delay prediction method is proposed in this paper. The proposed method optimizes the initial weights and biases of the BP neural network, and further optimizes them through backpropagation gradient descent, obtaining the final prediction model. The proposed method introduces a random perturbation factor in the sine and cosine functions, which increases the explorability and diversity of the method. And they are sorted and grouped according to the fitness values of the candidate solutions. At the same time, different update strategies are adopted based on the different groups, enabling the method to perform global and local search simultaneously. In the update strategy, a linear function is also introduced in addition to the sine and cosine functions, enabling the method to maintain the direction of the current optimal solution to a certain extent. Finally, the superiority and effectiveness of the method compared with traditional methods are verified through some comparative simulations, indicating that the method has a strong delay prediction ability.