The single most important event in building an NFL team. Three days, 257 picks, 32 franchises making decisions that will define their next decade. Here's how it all works.
The draft is days away. Get every team's needs, top prospect profiles, and the full breakdown of what to watch for during draft weekend.
Everything you need to understand before, during, and after draft weekend.
From the first draft in 1936 to Radio City Music Hall to the fan-event spectacle of today. How the draft became the NFL's second-biggest event.
Pick order, compensatory picks, trading picks, the clock, undrafted free agents — every mechanic explained from pick #1 to #257.
The rookie wage scale, 5th-year options, what each draft slot costs, and why the first-round pick is the best value in football.
The essentials — what every fan should know before draft weekend.
Teams pick in reverse order of their previous season's record — the worst team picks first. This is the NFL's competitive balance mechanism: the teams that need help the most get the first chance at the best talent. The Super Bowl champion always picks last (or 32nd) in each round.
Teams can trade draft picks — current picks, future picks, or picks combined with players. The "trade chart" (originally created by Jimmy Johnson in 1989) assigns point values to each pick to facilitate fair trades. "Moving up" costs picks; "moving down" adds them. Draft-day trades are among the most exciting moments of the event.
Teams that lose more and better free agents than they sign in a given year receive compensatory picks at the end of rounds 3–7. These are awarded by the NFL using a formula based on salary, playing time, and Pro Bowl selections of the lost players. Compensatory picks cannot be traded.
After all 257 picks are made, teams may sign any remaining undrafted players as free agents. Hundreds of players sign undrafted, and some go on to significant careers — Hall of Famers like Tony Romo, James Harrison, and Arian Foster all went undrafted. The UDFA market is immediate and frenzied.