Comp picks announced … A little earlier than usual, the NFL has announced this year’s compensatory draft picks. This year, the league awarded a total of 32 comp picks to 16 different teams. Compensatory picks are awarded to teams that lost more, or better, unrestricted free agents than it acquired in the 2016 off-season. Miami gets the highest comp pick this year – the 97th at the end of the 3rd round. Cleveland, Denver, Kansas City and Cincinnati, though, ended up with the most comp picks – 4 each – while Miami got three and the L.A. Rams and Seattle two each. In fact, Seattle got a pair of third round comp picks. A couple of notes re this year’s comp picks. First, for the first time comp picks can be traded. In the past, they could not be moved. At the same time, this year’s list of comp picks has a distribution by round quite different from earlier years. In the past, the largest number of comp picks were in the later rounds with usually only around 3-4 being awarded in the 3rd. This year, though, 11 comp picks were awarded in the 3rd round, compared with just 3 in the 7th. If that is to be the new norm, it could make teams more willing to let their own free agents walk with the hope of getting a comp pick back in return. Also note we will be updating this year’s selection order ASAP.
