The Basics:
The draft lets NFL teams welcome top college talent. Teams with the worst records from the previous season get higher picks. To be eligible, players must be three years out of high school. The NFL has 32 teams and at the end of the year, the teams who had the most losses and fewest wins are considered the ones who “performed” the worst.
The NFL Draft is a chance for the lower performing teams to improve by choosing the athletes they feel will help their team the most. The team with the very worst record gets the first pick in the draft. The team with the second-worst record gets the second pick, and so on.
This system is meant to help weaker teams improve by giving them first dibs on the best new players coming out of college.
Rounds:
The NFL Draft is a long event, spread out over three days, where new college football players are showcased, and NFL teams get to “pick” the ones they want the most.
There are seven rounds in the draft:
- Rounds 1-3 (Day 1 & 2): These are considered the “primetime” rounds. Here, teams get to pick the very best players coming out of college, the ones with the most potential to be superstars. There’s a lot of excitement and media coverage during these rounds.
- Rounds 4-7 (Day 3): These rounds are still important, but the focus shifts to players who might be a bit less polished or have a specific skill set a team needs. There’s still a chance to find some hidden gems in these later rounds!
Each round has 32 picks, one for each team in the NFL. So, in total, there are 224 players (7 rounds x 32 picks) who can potentially get drafted by an NFL team. The draft order (who picks first, who picks second, etc.) is determined by the previous season’s records, as mentioned earlier, with the worst teams getting the higher picks.
Compensatory Picks:
Teams losing key free agents may get extra picks the following year.
Imagine a team has a great season with a strong roster. After the season ends, some of those players can become free agents, meaning they’re no longer under contract and can negotiate with any team.
Losing key free agents can be a blow for a team because they’re losing talented players. To help balance things out, the NFL awards compensatory picks in the following year’s draft to teams that lose more valuable free agents than they gain.
Here’s how it works:
- The NFL considers factors like a player’s salary, playing time, and postseason honors to determine their value as a free agent.
- Teams that lose more valuable free agents than they acquire get awarded compensatory picks at the end of rounds 3 through 7. The more valuable free agents they lose, the higher the compensatory pick they get. These picks are essentially “bonus picks” on top of the regular draft order determined by their record.
This system helps to create a more balanced league by giving teams that lose good players a chance to replenish their talent pool.
