NFL Draft

The NFL Draft (officially the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting) is an annual sports draft in which National Football League in the U.S.A. (NFL) teams take turns selecting amateur American football players and other first-time eligible players. Currently, the draft consists of seven rounds. Each team is assigned a selection in each round, with the teams with the worst record from the previous year being assigned the best picks in each round. If more than two teams have the same win and loss record, then the team who has played opponents that have a better win loss ratio are considered the bigger losers, and are given the opportunity of having the first pick. This helps the league achieve a degree of parity.

The draft is the first chance each team gets at players who have been out of high school for at least three years. Players whose high school class did not graduate three or more years before are not eligible for the draft and hence they are not eligible to play in the NFL. Most drafted players come directly out of college football programs as seniors or juniors, though some underclassmen are eligible, and other players are selected from minor leagues like the Arena Football League.

The NFL allows each team to spend a limited amount of money from its salary cap to sign rookies (including undrafted players). Teams with higher picks get a higher rookie salary cap allocation. In most years, the salary cap increases from the year before, so most years there is more money allocated to teams for signing rookies. This form of salary control is legal because it has been negotiated into the NFL's collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the players' union.

The drafted players are paid salaries commensurate with the position in which they were drafted. High first-round picks get paid the most, and low round picks get paid the least. There is a de facto pay scale for drafted rookies. After the draft, any non-drafted rookies are allowed to sign a contract with any team in the league. These rookie free-agents usually do not get paid as well as drafted players, nearly all of them signing for the predetermined rookie minimum.

The first professional football draft was held in 1936. Originally, it was a low-key affair, for which teams prepared little. Over the years, scouting for the draft has grown to be a complicated pseudo-science, in which teams use workout data from prospects, interviews, game films, and projections of skills as players mature to decide which college players are the best in the country.

Each year, one month after the Super Bowl in late January, several hundred of the best players are invited to participate in the NFL Combine held late February in Indianapolis at the RCA Dome. The NFL Combine is the only event where all scouts see all draft bound players perform under the same conditions. At the Combine, players undergo a series of physical tests and measurements in addition to a 12 minute test of intelligence known as The Wonderlic.

In the 1980s, cable sports channel ESPN began televising the draft, which led to an increase in its popularity. Now, "draftniks" like ESPN's Mel Kiper, Jr. work year-round on studying and projecting where players will end up in the draft, and which teams will select them. For a detailed projection of possible first round picks, you can go to sites like FootballMinds.com, who have broken down team needs and conducted a mock draft based on those needs.

Compensatory Picks

In addition to the 32 picks in each round, there are a total of 31 picks dispersed at the ends of Rounds 3-7. These picks, which are known as "Compensatory Picks" are awarded to teams who have lost more talent players than they gained the previous year in Free Agency. These picks do not account for released players or signing players cut by another team. For example, if in the previous year, a team lost two starters and two backup players from other teams signing them as free agents, while they signed only two new backup players, the team would likely receive two compensatory picks. These picks can not be traded.

Supplemental Draft

In late summer, the NFL also holds a Supplemental Draft to accommodate players who did not enter the regular draft because they thought they still had academic eligibility to play college football. The supplemental draft maintains the same team order from the regular draft, with the team with the worst record in the previous season picking first. However, in the supplemental draft, a team is not required to use any picks. Instead, if a team wants a player in the supplemental draft, they submit a "bid" to the Commissioner with the round they would pick that player. If no other team places a bid on that player at an earlier spot, the team is awarded the player and has to give up an equivalent pick in the following year's draft. (For example, RB Tony Hollings was taken by the Houston Texans in the 2nd round of the Supplemental Draft in 2003. Thus in the 2004 NFL Draft, the Texans forfeited a second round pick).

The 1985 Supplemental Draft was particularly controversial. Bernie Kosar of the University of Miami earned his academic degree a year early but did not enter the regular draft that year. Rather than finish his eligibility at Miami, he entered into talks with his hometown Cleveland Browns, who advised him to delay his professional eligibility until after the regular draft. They then traded for the right to choose first in the Supplemental Draft. This angered many clubs, notably the Minnesota Vikings and New York Giants, who had expressed interest in choosing him in that season's regular draft. Many of today's Supplemental Draft rules aim at preventing a reoccurrence of this incident.

Today, the players who enter the Supplemental Draft are usually graded as players who should be drafted at a later round or have college eligibility problems due to poor academic problems or discipline issues. Therefore, combining this trend with the strange proceedings of the supplemental draft and the high price a team must give up to take a player, it is easy to see why only 32 players have been taken in the past 26 Supplemental Drafts. Most notably among these was Dave Brown, a Duke University quarterback selected first overall in the 1992 Supplemental Draft by the New York Giants. Brown supplanted Phil Simms as the starter in 1994, and went on to play 10 seasons with the Giants and the Arizona Cardinals.

Trivia

*Note: As of 2005

• Quarterbacks have been selected first overall a total of 25 times, more than any other position. Offensive backs, including running backs, halfbacks, and fullbacks, have been selected 23 times.

• The University of Miami holds the record as the school with the most first round draft picks in a single draft. In the 2004 NFL Draft, a record six Hurricanes were taken in the first round: free safety Sean Taylor, tight end Kellen Winslow II, linebacker Jonathan Vilma, linebacker D.J. Williams, offensive lineman Vernon Carey, and defensive tackle Vince Wilfork.

• Quarterbacks have been selected first overall for five straight years, dating back to 2001. Dating back to 1998, quarterbacks have been selected first seven times in eight drafts.

• Notre Dame and USC have each had five athletes selected #1 in the draft. Auburn, Georgia, Ohio State, Stanford, and Texas have each had three.

• USC is also the first and only school to date to have had back-to-back years in which one of its players went #1 in the draft (in 1968 with Ron Yary and in 1969 with O.J. Simpson).

• Auburn and Penn State are the only two schools to have had three players taken in the top ten of the first round in the same year. Auburn did it in 2005 with RB Ronnie Brown (#2), RB Carnell Williams (#5), and CB Carlos Rogers (#9). Penn State did it in 1995, with RB Ki-Jana Carter (#1), QB Kerry Collins (#5), and TE Kyle Brady (#9).

• Alex Smith, drafted out of Utah in 2005, was the youngest player chosen #1 in the modern era. He was 20 years, 353 days old.

• 253 Smiths have been selected in the draft. Other notable surnames include: Williams (247), Johnson (233), Jones (201), Brown (188).

• There have only been two siblings taken first in the draft in each of their respective years: Peyton Manning in 1998, Indianapolis Colts and Eli Manning in 2004, San Diego Chargers, then traded to New York Giants.

• The first player ever selected in the NFL draft, Jay Berwanger (1936), never played in the NFL.

• So far, only 11 players taken first overall in the draft are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. As of 2006, 15 of these first overall draft picks (spanning the drafts of 1985 through 2005) are ineligible for Hall of Fame election, as they played within the last 5 years. This eliminates nearly 22% of first overall draft picks from current HOF consideration. Of the remaining 55 eligible candidates, 20% have entered the Hall of Fame, a considerably high ratio in comparison with other drafted and undrafted players gaining entry to the Hall. With Troy Aikman as a finalist on the 2006 ballot, and both Irving Fryar and Bruce Smith likely to gain future entry, the ratio should remain relatively constant over the next few years.

• 3 players taken first overall in the draft never played in the NFL.

• The 49ers chose Alex Smith with the first pick in the 2005 NFL draft and assigned him uniform No. 11, which extends a bizarre numerical pattern among top draft picks and their NFL uniform numbers: Michael Vick (2001, No. 7), David Carr (2002, No. 8), Carson Palmer (2003, No. 9), Eli Manning (2004, No. 10), and Smith (2005, No. 11).