NFL Draft Part 2: What To Do About Picks and Trades

Before, during and after the NFL Draft, teams are wheeling and dealing to get the players that they want.

In the words of my colleague Andy Ross, teams become a “league of Pinocchios” this time of year. While media pundits often try to guess who will end up on what team by the end of the NFL draft, the backroom trading that goes on makes this a difficult prospect indeed.

Players who are preparing for the draft often have a lot of questions about trading. While agents don’t have a massive role at this particular stage of the onboarding process, I will attempt to answer some of the more common questions here.

How do trades work?

While there aren’t many explicit restrictions in place as to when a team can or cannot trade a player, NFL teams almost always trade for current players, draft picks or a combination of the two categories. This tradition is in sharp contrast to European soccer leagues, where players are often traded in all cash deals.

Some of these deals get extremely complex. In 2009, the Chicago Bears traded their first and third round selections for 2009, their first round selection for 2010 and a player to the Denver Broncos in order to procure quarterback Jay Cutler.

How long do picked players sign for?

Players’ contracts are, to a large degree, determined by the collective bargaining agreement between the Player’s Union and the NFL. One of the stipulations of this CBA is that almost all rookie contracts are four years long.

There is a little bit of wiggle room in these negotiations, and some subtleties likewise exist in terms of a player’s ability  to explore other options before the end of his first four years, but we’ll discuss those in the next section of this series. The simple takeaway is that most players who are picked in the NFL Draft should expect to play for that team for the next four years if they are not traded to another team.

What if a player refuses to play for the team that drafts him?

Most of the time when a player refuses to sign with the team that drafts him, money is at the heart of the issue in one way or another. However, every so often a player is strongly disinclined to play for a team. In this situation, there are two possible outcomes.

NFL Draft picks are limited, so if a player absolutely refuses to play for a team, he will probably be traded. This allows the team to get some value out of him, as a player who will not sign is a waste of a draft pick. In 2004, Eli Manning was drafted by the San Diego Chargers who had the first overall pick, despite knowing that he did not want to play for their team. After some backroom talks and very awkward moments, Manning was traded to the Giants for Phillip Rivers and several top draft picks.

The other option is to refuse to sign outright and to enter the draft the following year. This is extremely rare, however, and could potentially cause other teams to view the player unfavorably.

The NFL Draft is an exciting, unpredictable time for players. Those that are not picked can still end up on NFL teams under certain circumstances, and some have even gone on to be very successful as free agents. Kurt Warner, for example, has played in several Super Bowls despite having never been drafted. I’ll discuss this more in part 4 of this series. In part 3, I will be explaining the steps that come next for players picked in the NFL Draft and what a good agent can do to ensure their success.

Will they? Won’t they? What’s your opinion on the NFL Draft? Feel free to leave your thoughts on the NFL draft in the comment section below.