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Yes and no. To take the second bolded point first:Could it be contract related?
Can a UDFA get more than a draft pick?
Maybe for cap reasons and precedent you don’t want to overpay a late draft pick.
Of course, it was suggested that the reason they drafted Ashby was to avoid a bidding war.
Each draft pick has a specific contract value associated with that pick; by day 3, the only difference between contracts is the size of the signing bonus. In the seventh round this year, the top pick (DAL's Jay Toia) got ~$153K, while the picks after the 32nd (both Ashby and Minor) got ~$102K.
As to the first point:
It happens, but not often. The main reason it doesn't happen often is that UDFA guarantees mean part of the salary they would receive is guaranteed, but that's not on top of their salaries. For example, Efton Chism III was prized enough that the Patriots gave him a $25K signing bonus and guaranteed 100% of his UDFA salary. That means that someone will be paying him that $234K. If he ends up somewhere else in the league, that team does; if he ends up here (or nowhere), NE pays that money. If he's good enough that he makes the 53, that counts toward the $234K guarantee as well. So, for example, if both he and Ashby make the 53 this year, Ashby will make more than Chism, because Ashby got a $102K signing bonus. [OTOH, if they somehow both end up out of football after TC, Chism will get ~$260K to Ashby's ~$102K.] Only a small percentage of UDFAs get more than a 7th rounder guaranteed, but there are others besides Chism.
OTOH, the main reason it does sometimes happen in the long run is that UDFA contracts only run three years rather than four. So, for example, let's say Chism performs well. The worst case scenario would be that he plays out his UDFA contract and then gets an RFA deal in his fourth year. If he got and played on the "right of first refusal" tender in 2028, that would be on the order of $4M, versus the ~$1.25M that Ashby is slated to get in 2028.












