Miguel, Please Help!

[Owl]

I know with our upcoming draft picks there is a pool to sign these players. Can we use that pool plus all or any of the money that we are under the salary cap if, per chance, we traded some players for additional draft picks? Thanks for all your help.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

I know with our upcoming draft picks there is a pool to sign these players. Can we use that pool plus all or any of the money that we are under the salary cap if, per chance, we traded some players for additional draft picks? Thanks for all your help.

I believe the rookie pool is divided up among the teams based on the number of and slotting of the picks you have, but you are limited to that for signing purposes. Which is probably why sometimes teams are more than willing to take future year picks. Sometimes teams with high first and second round picks can't afford to sign some of their late day 2 picks or UDFA's because the contracts they gave to their top picks ate up too much of their rookie pool.

 

[unoriginal]

I believe the rookie pool is divided up among the teams based on the number of and slotting of the picks you have, but you are limited to that for signing purposes. Which is probably why sometimes teams are more than willing to take future year picks. Sometimes teams with high first and second round picks can't afford to sign some of their late day 2 picks or UDFA's because the contracts they gave to their top picks ate up too much of their rookie pool.

If teams trade away their picks doesn't the rookie signing pool decrease by the amount slotted for those picks?

IMO the only reason to trade away picks for cap reasons would be if you don't have enough total cap room to sign all your picks to begin with. This year even the Colts seem to have that.

The real reason to trade picks into the future is if you have a limited number of slots where a rookie can contribute on the roster, and you see no outstanding values on your draft board. Generally the going rate for future picks is one round up for each year you trade back, and sometimes that's the best value at a particular pick.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

If teams trade away their picks doesn't the rookie signing pool decrease by the amount slotted for those picks?

IMO the only reason to trade away picks for cap reasons would be if you don't have enough total cap room to sign all your picks to begin with. This year even the Colts seem to have that.

The real reason to trade picks into the future is if you have a limited number of slots where a rookie can contribute on the roster, and you see no outstanding values on your draft board. Generally the going rate for future picks is one round up for each year you trade back, and sometimes that's the best value at a particular pick.

I believe what you are saying is true, but that's not the question he was asking. I think he wanted to know if we traded some players for picks could we use some of our $30M and not just the rookie pool to sign them. And I believe the answer is no. I also believe that is one reason (in addition to availability of current roster spots and future value) teams will sometimes even prefer a future pick to a current year pick. When we tagged and traded Tebucky we got a package of present and future picks, and one of those eventually morphed into trade currency for Corey.