How many players are drafted in the NFL each year?

The NFL Draft often turns dreams into reality. Numerous college players who’ve dreamt of making it to the NFL will be selected by the NFL teams they have grown up watching. The Draft is where the amateurs become professionals.

The 2024 NFL draft is around the corner. This year, the three-day annual event is happening in the city of Detroit. The primary site for the draft is around Campus Martius Park and Hart Plaza.

Fans couldn’t be more excited for their teams to pick the best players. The NFL teams themselves very much look forward to the NFL Draft because this is an opportunity to help the franchise move forward in the right direction by drafting the right players for the organization

The 2024 NFL Draft is happening from 25 April through 27 April. Before that it is important that we brush up on certain topics and know what’s waiting on the other side.

How many players are drafted in the NFL?

The NFL Draft consists of seven rounds. There are a total of 32 teams in the league. In each round of the draft, every team is given a selection. So a total of at least 224 players are drafted in the NFL every single year.

Apart from these 224 selections, the NFL also awards 32 more draft picks known as the compensatory picks. The concept of compensatory picks was first introduced in the year 1994. In the year 2017, trading the compensatory picks was also allowed.

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Here is a table of the number of picks that was drafted in the past 5 years:

What are compensatory picks?

Compensatory picks are provided by the NFL to the teams in order to ensure balance among the teams. These picks are awarded to teams who go through changes in their personnel. The personnel changes include the number of players a team loses during free agency.

When players go out in free agency there is a natural imbalance that occurs on the rooster. In order to fill that hole, the league helps the teams with compensatory picks.

How does compensatory picks work?

The NFL will award a total of 32 compensatory picks. Every NFL team is eligible to attaina a maximum of 4 compensatory picks. These picks are awarded only from round 3 through to round 7. There are a few factors that the league considers for calculating the compensatory picks. They include the postseason honors, the playing time of the player as well as the salary of the player. In order of importance, they are the salary, then the playing time, followed by the postseason honors.

There are two ways in which the NFL teams are awarded compensatory picks. One of the ways is when players move to other teams during free agency, compensatory picks are awarded to ensure balance. Certain teams master this art. They know when to let go of a particular player because that hole in the roster will eventually be compensated by the league in the form of the picks.

Another way in which teams are awarded compensatory picks is through changes in the coaching personnel. Whenever other teams hire one of the members of a team’s coaching staff as their head coach or general manager, the league awards the team with picks: two picks if one staff is hired; three picks if two are hired.

One of the classic examples of this is the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers lost Robert Saleh to the Jets in 2021 and Mike McDaniel to the Dolphins in 2022. Along with them, the 49ers also lost DeMeco Ryans to Texans, Ran Carthon to Titans. The Jets, Dolphins and Texans hired Saleh, McDaniel and Ryans as their head coaches while the Titans hired Carthon as their GM. This is because of the new rules passed by the league in 2020 (JC-2A), which changed the way that teams were awarded the compensatory picks.

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