THE NFL DRAFT (TRADES AND TRANSACTIONS)

The NFL Draft is the time of year where losers can become winners, optimism surrounds your favorite franchise, and yes, hope is again on the horizon. What makes the draft so special and exciting is the fact that you are watching your team be built in front of your eyes. Some so called ‘draftniks’ like to play GM during the offseason and analyze the college players eligible for the draft. This process usually starts late in the regular season, during which time teams begin stacking players against each other, seeing who is the best. You watch the different bowl games, the combine, and pro days to see these players up close. Watching teams put these players through rigorous workouts and interviews to see who is the best guy for their team. Once teams have stacked their players and a big board has been finalized, teams go into the draft with confidence that all angles, options, and players have been explored.

Draft Day

The time has finally come for teams to select players and start retooling their rosters. The one factor of the draft that teams do not have control over is if their top player is available come picking time. Unless you’re drafting number one overall, you cannot be assured your guy will be there. It is during these times that you will see teams attempt to maneuver up to snag their ‘guy’. With that being said, lets take a look at the draft value chart and some scenarios in which a draft day trade is necessary to get your guy. 

NFL Draft Trade Value Chart

In 1990, the Dallas Cowboys led by Jimmy Johnson developed a draft pick value chart. The intention was to assign a numerical value to each draft pick. This is not a guideline teams have to abide by, but rather simply a starting point.

Let’s use the Bills for a hypothetical example. They own the 10th overall pick in this years draft. As mentioned earlier, as an organization you have to be prepared for movement. If an opportunity presents itself, then you have to be ready and willing to make a deal. Be able to make a decision, a splash move, all under an enormous amount of pressure. So, in this scenario the Bills are targeting Jamal Adams, a safety out of LSU. They believe this player is the number 1 player in draft. The draft commences and Adams is still available at pick four. Their evaluation of Adams is that he is not only an elite talent, but also a high quality teammate and competitor. Those traits, combined with the safety position being a position of need, leads them to decide they are willing to give up resources in order to execute a trade to move up to get him. According to the draft value chart, the 10th pick is valued at 1300 points and the 4th is valued at 1800 points. The difference is 500 points, which again, according to the chart, would take Buffalo’s 2nd round pick (43rd overall), which is worth 460 points. If the owner of the 4th pick agreed to that, then Buffalo would give up their 10th and 43rd overall pick in exchange for the 4th overall.

These kind of draft day scenarios happen frequently. So much so, in fact, that teams will run hundreds of mock drafts ahead of time to fully prepare for the myriad scenarios that may occur. Of course, on draft day things are much different. When these scenarios are taking shape and being negotiated, both sides are looking to come out of the trade feeling as if they won. The Bills under Doug Whaley have been super aggressive on draft day. Do they have someone in mind that they may want to trade up for?