The NFL awarded 32 compensatory picks yesterday. These are handed out prior to the draft each year to teams which experienced larger losses in free agency than gains. Until this year, those picks were not eligible to be traded. But that has changed.
32 total picks were distributed to 16 NFL teams, and in 2017, teams can trade those picks. So Cleveland, which already had plenty of picks due to wheeling and dealing (most notably trading out of selecting Carson Wentz), now has an additional third-round selection and two more fourth-rounders.
Eleven different teams gained a third-round pick, which is a very high number -- nearly three times as many as in any other year in the 20-year history of the process. Last year there were only four third-rounders doled out; the year before that there were three. Perhaps teams are being more careful in free agency, making moves in such a way as to increase their odds of benefiting from the league's formula for awarding these picks. Whatever the case, a third of the league's teams have an extra third-round pick that they didn't have two days ago. Nice.
Here's a link to the history of the picks since 1993. Guy by the name of Tom Brady will leap out at people.
I think the NFL may need to rethink the process if teams are becoming more savvy about how to find extra mid-round picks. The first pick in the fourth round dropped a dozen spots overnight; yikes. And a whole bunch of those extra thirds went to playoff teams: Miami, Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Seattle. The Seahawks got two picks.
Good teams getting multiple mid-round draft picks: Was this really what the league was looking for when it started awarding these choices?
--Andy Richardson