Was trying to get to the bottom of the compensatory picks thing but noticed in 2002, Deion Branch was selected with the 65th choice, the 33rd pick of the 2nd round. But that's not a compensatory pick. Anyone remember exactly what happened here?
Excluding Branch for the moment, here's what I counted:
23 total compensatory picks since 2000.
- 2 picks in round 3 (Kaczur, McKenzie)
- 1 pick in round 4 (Robinson-Randall)
- 3 picks in round 5
- 8 picks in round 6
- 8 picks in round 7
When evaluating comp picks, we should consider where these picks are made. Not only are the majority of picks made in the last two rounds (70%), but they are made at the end of each round. So a comp pick in round 5 is like a top of round 6 pick.
In the third round, I think we did okay with a starting tackle for many years, and McKenzie is still lingering. Robinson-Randall played a bit for us, though not having a great career.
But from rounds 5 to 7, these are late picks with low odds of developing. To say there's no impact is not true though. The following players came out of our 19 late-round picks.
- Myron Pryor
- Tom Brady
- Brandon Deaderick
- David Givens
- Patrick Pass
One could argue for Le Kevin or Kade Weston who is on IR. But those 5 are/were solid contributors on our teams, over 25% of those late-round comp picks. That's a really high rate of success for the latter part of the draft.
There have been some bad picks in there as well, no doubt. I don't think we can count any of the 5ths as successes, with Bussey, Oldenburg, and Claridge all striking out. But especially in the 7th round, they're basically first dibs on rookie free agents, and all of the names listed above were 7th rounders expect for Brady.