NFL Competition Committee Votes Compensatory Picks Can Be Traded Next Year

The NFL's competition committee reached a unanimous decision Thursday, voting that teams are permitted to trade compensatory draft picks beginning in the 2016 NFL draft.

Dallas Cowboys executive vice president and competition committee member Stephen Jones announced the news in an interview with SiriusXM NFL Radio:    

Compensatory picks are rewarded as early as the third round all the way through the seventh and final round of the draft. They are determined by how many players a team loses or gains in free agency, and no team can have more than four.

A total of 32 selections are available to account for every team and are based on a formula the NFL doesn't make available to the public. Some may sleep on the awarding of these picks, but with how tough the draft is to evaluate, any choice is an asset who could turn into a franchise player.

Below are the projections Over the Cap's Nick Korte came up with in September, using his own formula that has tended to be close to what the league ultimately decides:

Pick Rd.	Team	Free Agent Lost
3	Detroit	Ndamukong Suh
3	New England	Darrelle Revis
3	Seattle	Byron Maxwell
3	Denver	Julius Thomas
4	San Francisco	Chris Culliver
4	Baltimore	Pernell McPhee
4	Denver	Orlando Franklin
4	Baltimore	Torrey Smith
4	Green Bay	Tramon Williams

To break down the four teams at the top, the Detroit Lions need all the help they can get as they brace for a probable regime change and cash in on Ndamukong Suh's departure.

For the reigning Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, they've managed to go undefeated to date despite the loss of superstar cornerback Darrelle Revis. New England is currently forfeiting its first-round pick because of the Deflategate fallout, but head coach Bill Belichick has been known to maneuver and could parlay a premium third-round asset into a higher choice if he sees a player he likes.

Some young man out of Michigan named Tom Brady was once upon a time a sixth-round compensatory pick, per NFL.com. That has worked out pretty well for the Pats.

The Seattle Seahawks cashed in on a seemingly inconsequential seventh-round compensatory choice in 2011. Linebacker Malcolm Smith was the pick and wound up winning the Super Bowl XLVIII MVP award.

Finally, the Denver Broncos have had strong drafts under general manager John Elway and could well use their projected third-round comp pick to move around. They figure to be pretty far back in the first two rounds as the current AFC West front-runners.

The biggest star to emerge in recent years from the compensatory system is 2011 fifth-round pick Pernell McPhee. He excelled as a situational pass-rusher with the Baltimore Ravens before signing a free-agent deal with the Chicago Bears this March.

Now the Ravens stand to cash in on McPhee's exit in the 2016 draft.

Adding the capacity to trade is a savvy move by the NFL that should bring a bit more attention to one part of the draft that seems to be an afterthought of what otherwise helps the league dominate headlines even in its offseason.