What is the Purpose of Compensatory Picks

I don't understand the underlying logic or reason for compensatory picks. A team knowingly signs a player to a contract of a certain duration. Once that contract has expired, the player is a free agent and can sign with another team. The original team then gets a compensatory pick. Seems like the team's being rewarded for failing to come to an agreement with the player. I would think the NFLPA would be against this since its a disincentive to for teams to sign their own free agents. What am I missing?

I feel as though, like most NFL player movement rules, it's intended to create parity. It's a way of compensating teams that may not be great free agent destinations for one reason or another, by giving them extra kicks at the draft can. As is, bad teams already fall into a vicious cycle:

- Suck.

- No one wants to go to your team because you suck.

- Anyone you do bring in you have to overpay like crazy, which makes it harder to field a complete team.

- Suck more.

The comp picks are really a drop in the bucket overall anyway.

It's about Parity.

If you are unable to sign more players then you lose, you are given the chance to draft players to offset the balance.

It seems to give smart GM's an advantage over not so smart GM's.

raduray said:

I don't understand the underlying logic or reason for compensatory picks. A team knowingly signs a player to a contract of a certain duration. Once that contract has expired, the player is a free agent and can sign with another team. The original team then gets a compensatory pick. Seems like the team's being rewarded for failing to come to an agreement with the player. I would think the NFLPA would be against this since its a disincentive to for teams to sign their own free agents. What am I missing?

Click to expand...

I agree with you. When you go to the logical conclusion, the concept makes no sense and contradicts itself. It made sense in a pre-salary cap era when teams with less money could make up for losing their own FAs by replenishing them with talent. Considering that the decision to let a player walk is now a matter of resource allocation, the idea of compensatory pick rewards becomes absurd.

I wish the NFL* gave comp picks for losing coaches.

BB spends a lot of capital in raising them from pups.

To compensate.

Next.

The Gr8est said:

I wish the NFL* gave comp picks for losing coaches.

BB spends a lot of capital in raising them from pups.

Click to expand...

"Okay, let's run the 46 All-Out Cross Fade... wait... SQUIRREL!!!!"

We had a nice discussion about this a couple of months ago:
Pats unfairly gaining advantage with compensatory picks?

Since comp pick value is tied to salary, it can be a factor in driving up contract prices. This is why the NFLPA might be in support.

Ice_Ice_Brady said:

I agree with you. When you go to the logical conclusion, the concept makes no sense and contradicts itself. It made sense in a pre-salary cap era when teams with less money could make up for losing their own FAs by replenishing them with talent. Considering that the decision to let a player walk is now a matter of resource allocation, the idea of compensatory pick rewards becomes absurd.

Click to expand...

I would say this is incorrect. If you draft/develop players well you cannot resign them all.

See for example the situation the Patriots were in a year ago with Chandler Jones/Hightower/Collins/Butler/Assorted other good players(L Ryan, Sheard, etc). Where it was widely believed/assumed that the Patriots could not fit contracts for all their marque players under the cap.

And in fact BB traded both Jones and Collins away.

So basically if you draft/develop well you are going to lose some of your marque players due to the salary cap. And as compensation for this you get extra draft picks to replace them.

Nehalem said:

I would say this is incorrect. If you draft/develop players well you cannot resign them all.

See for example the situation the Patriots were in a year ago with Chandler Jones/Hightower/Collins/Butler/Assorted other good players(L Ryan, Sheard, etc). Where it was widely believed/assumed that the Patriots could not fit contracts for all their marque players under the cap.

And in fact BB traded both Jones and Collins away.

So basically if you draft/develop well you are going to lose some of your marque players due to the salary cap. And as compensation for this you get extra draft picks to replace them.

Click to expand...

Of course they could have resigned them all. Many teams would have resigned them all. It was a strategic decision to let various players walk away. When they don't sign their own free agent, Player X to a $12M annual deal, are they going to then take that $12M and invest it in stadium infrastructure? Of course not. They will use it to extend other players who won't count on the compensatory pick formula, trade for players who won't count on the compensatory pick formula, or sign cheap FAs who won't count much on the compensatory pick formula. The only reason that Player X will net them an additional compensatory picks is because he wore a Patriots uniform before he signed with another team, whereas other players who replace Player X may have the same value but were acquired through other means.

There's no reason to reward teams for making their own value-based decisions, which they believe are in their own best interest. In the case of the Patriots, they are usually upgrading their team anyway.

All teams have roughly $160M to spend on an annual basis. They are going to make decisions based on how to allocate the money, and for each player who walks away, that's more money to spend in another area. Compensatory picks are random loopholes during this era, a leftover rule from when payroll disparity existed.

I would argue that the rule actually hurts the game. One thing I like about the NBA is that, if you extend hometown players, you actually get some cap savings. This rule encourages teams to retain players, as fans don't like to see guys hopping off their team every year. The compensatory pick system disincentivizes teams from re-signing their own players, and there is no offsetting incentive from a cap economics perspective. What are there, less than 15 players who won both SB49 and SB51 with the Patriots? They were two yeas apart.

Compensatory picks are a holdover from the days back when the NFL did not want players to have free agency. The NFL wanted to discourage free agency so they created a rule that said if one team signs another team's free agent, they had to give that team a draft pick (or money). The Commissioner would decide how much and IIRC it could be as high as a first rounder. This kept player salaries down because a player would be beholden to his old team. No new team would want to give the player the money and lose a draft pick (think of the Malcolm Butler situation, but imagine it going on for 10 years instead of just 1).

The Compensatory pick process has evolved to the current day formula and is nowhere near as "expensive" as it used to be.

Ice_Ice_Brady said:

Of course they could have resigned them all. Many teams would have resigned them all. It was a strategic decision to let various players walk away. When they don't sign their own free agent, Player X to a $12M annual deal, are they going to then take that $12M and invest it in stadium infrastructure? Of course not. They will use it to extend other players who won't count on the compensatory pick formula, trade for players who won't count on the compensatory pick formula, or sign cheap FAs who won't count much on the compensatory pick formula. The only reason that Player X will net them an additional compensatory picks is because he wore a Patriots uniform before he signed with another team, whereas other players who replace Player X may have the same value but were acquired through other means.

Click to expand...

No they couldn't. The Patriots have ~$20m in capspace. Chandler Jones and Collins alone are averaging ~$29m a year.

And looking at their other signings/trades vs. losses in terms of $$$
Allen + Gilmore ~= Bennet + Ryan
Blount ~= Burkhead
Sheard ~= Gillislee + Guy

And then Mingo+Long are another $5m and I am out of signings to cancel...

So that puts us somewhere around $15m in the hole, and we still haven't signed Butler to an extension.

And this of course makes sense. Teams have equal money to spend, but unequal talent to spend it on. Long-term to have a good team you are going to have to spend more money. Since this is impossible due to the cap good teams are going to lose players.

Comp picks allow those teams to plug the holes in their roster.

It's a partial offset that teams use to recoup their losses, with varying success. There's no need to read anything more into it, because the system's not going anywhere for a while.

XLIX said:

Compensatory picks are a holdover from the days back when the NFL did not want players to have free agency. The NFL wanted to discourage free agency so they created a rule that said if one team signs another team's free agent, they had to give that team a draft pick (or money). The Commissioner would decide how much and IIRC it could be as high as a first rounder. This kept player salaries down because a player would be beholden to his old team. No new team would want to give the player the money and lose a draft pick (think of the Malcolm Butler situation, but imagine it going on for 10 years instead of just 1).

The Compensatory pick process has evolved to the current day formula and is nowhere near as "expensive" as it used to be.

Click to expand...

"The NFL" meaning "the owners." They wanted to continue to have exclusive control over a serf ... er, player ... for his entire career, or be compensated when they got outbid for a player's services.

Nehalem said:

No they couldn't. The Patriots have ~$20m in capspace. Chandler Jones and Collins alone are averaging ~$29m a year.

Click to expand...

The Patriots cap space on May 18, 2017 proves they could not have re-signed Jones and Collins? That is way beyond a reach. Of course they could have afforded both players if they felt they were worth the contracts they were asking for. They didn't pay them that money because it was more than the players were worth to them, not because of an economic disadvantage.

Let's take the Dwayne Allen trade. The Patriots traded for Allen, so he isn't part of any comp pick offset. They let Martellus Bennett walk, which is part of the comp pick formula. So, they replaced a tight end with another tight end and will get a comp pick for it.

Also, talent does not apply much to the salary cap era. Value, asset, and liability are more relevant. The Patriots may have viewed Bennett as a more talented player, but they view Allen as a greater asset (cost versus return). They went with the better asset and will still be rewarded with a comp pick.

I can see it's just the same point over and over again, so no need to keep going on this one.

Nehalem said:

No they couldn't. The Patriots have ~$20m in capspace. Chandler Jones and Collins alone are averaging ~$29m a year.

And looking at their other signings/trades vs. losses in terms of $$$
Allen + Gilmore ~= Bennet + Ryan
Blount ~= Burkhead
Sheard ~= Gillislee + Guy

And then Mingo+Long are another $5m and I am out of signings to cancel...

So that puts us somewhere around $15m in the hole, and we still haven't signed Butler to an extension.

And this of course makes sense. Teams have equal money to spend, but unequal talent to spend it on. Long-term to have a good team you are going to have to spend more money. Since this is impossible due to the cap good teams are going to lose players.

Comp picks allow those teams to plug the holes in their roster.

Click to expand...

What BB did with Jones and Collins is interesting from a "draft capital" perspective, too.

BB spent 808 points to trade up for Jones, then got 292 points (plus Cooper*) back on the trade, so his net cost for four years of Jones was equivalent to the #39 overall pick.

Collins originally cost 380 points and the trade brought back 88. His net cost for 3.5 years of Collins was equivalent to the #61 overall.

Then, BB spent the pick he got for Collins plus the #32 for Cooks and a 4th (essentially the #131 after Goodell confiscated the actual 4th from NO). Net cost in draft capital was 637 points for a player who had originally cost 850.

* Although the Pats got nothing out of Cooper, he cost the Card a crap-tonne of "draft capital". They originally spent 1500 points to acquire him, then gave him away, PLUS another 292 points in draft capital to acquire Jones (whose original cost was 808 points).

When it comes to draft capital, BB rarely loses, and never at the magnitude of what the Cards did with Cooper.

Ice_Ice_Brady said:

The Patriots cap space on May 18, 2017 proves they could not have re-signed Jones and Collins? That is way beyond a reach. Of course they could have afforded both players if they felt they were worth the contracts they were asking for. They didn't pay them that money because it was more than the players were worth to them, not because of an economic disadvantage.

Let's take the Dwayne Allen trade. The Patriots traded for Allen, so he isn't part of any comp pick offset. They let Martellus Bennett walk, which is part of the comp pick formula. So, they replaced a tight end with another tight end and will get a comp pick for it.

Also, talent does not apply much to the salary cap era. Value, asset, and liability are more relevant. The Patriots may have viewed Bennett as a more talented player, but they view Allen as a greater asset (cost versus return). They went with the better asset and will still be rewarded with a comp pick.

I can see it's just the same point over and over again, so no need to keep going on this one.

Click to expand...

Both Jones and Collins had holes in their game.

The draft used to be what 12 rounds? Now it is only technically 7 rounds, but it is actually 8 rounds, because the NFL hands out exactly 32 comp picks every year. Now granted those picks are spread out over rounds 3-7, but it still adds 32 more picks to the draft. Note: if the NFL top secret formula for handing out draft picks somehow fails to identify 32 picks that are worthy of compensation, they will award the last few picks to the teams at the top of the first round. So say they identified 29 comp picks, they would issue them and then give the last 3 picks in the draft to the teams that had the first three picks in the draft.

I'm guessing that originally when free agency was introduced the teams like the Giants, Steelers, and Cowboys were all crying because they had long been able to hold onto their good players. So with free agency came the comp picks. Now that they can be traded they will become even more valuable. Some teams, especially the Ravens and the Patriots, figured out long ago how to play the comp pick game.

You can actually see in some years, BB went nuts and signed all kinds of UFA, and some years he would sign very little. I think some of this was calculated on comp picks.

But like all things with the NFL, I think originally it was meant to help the Steelers, Cowboys, and Giants. Funny how many times those three teams seem to benefit from NFL rules (or the lack of punishment for breaking said rules).