Evaluating OTC’s 2016 Compensatory Draft Picks Projection

The official list of the compensatory picks for the 2016 NFL Draft came in about 10 days early this year, and I am quite happy with how it compared with my own projection.  As always, here is the post-mortem evaluation to see what I got right and wrong, and what I can improve upon.

• Highlighted in green, I got 26 of the 33 (more on that in a moment) comp picks for the correct player and the correct round.  Additionally, I can say for sure that I correctly projected five other eligible comp picks that failed to make the 33-pick limit.  This includes Tyrod Taylor, despite a Ravens source saying that the team expected to get a comp pick for him.
• Highlighted in yellow, there were 5 comp picks in which I had the correct player, but was off by one round.  In all cases, this was a case of slightly missing the cutoff points between the 5th & 6th rounds, and the 6th & 7th rounds.
• Highlighted in blue, there were 2 comp picks that I did not project as being awarded, but had anticipated in an altering scenario in which there was a possibility that they could happen.  These picks resulted from the following three misses:
  • Because Charles Clay did not qualify, Buffalo got a 4th for Da’Norris Searcy.  Thankfully, due to Olivier Vernon’s recent adventures with the transition tag, this is one I was able to catch just in time.  We now know for sure that while transition tagged players once counted in the formula as recently as 2007, they no longer do. Thus, the Dolphins were indeed wise to rescind their tag on Vernon to ensure eligibility for a 3rd round comp pick for him in 2017.
  • Because Alex Carrington did not qualify, Buffalo got a 6th for CJ Spiller.
  • Because Seyi Ajirotutu did not qualify, San Diego did not get a 6th for Ryan Mathews.
• Highlighted in red, I thankfully had no awarded comp picks that were unanticipated misses by me.  However, there is one miss that did not make the 33-pick limit that I did not anticipate.  Jerome Felton did not qualify, despite showing up as a UFA on the official press release. This opened up an eligible 7th round comp pick for Erik Pears that just barely missed the cut.  It is my belief that this came from a renegotiation to his prior contract with the Vikings that gave Felton a player void for his final year.  Such moves should lose a player’s eligibilty to become a CFA, first discovered with Laveranues Coles in 2010.
• The unhighlighted rows are eligible comp picks failing to make the 33-pick limit that, unfortunately, no information was provided upon in the official press release, as there usually is.  I’m quite confident, however, that Cincinnati was indeed eligible for a 7th for Marshall Newhouse, and that Carolina was eligible for a net value 7th.  I’m less confident in either of the Kansas City picks, though.

All in all, I’m quite pleased with how this results came out.  In particular, I believe that I’m on the right track with my hypothesis that the cutoffs between rounds are based on percentiles with relation to the leaguewide rosters at the end of the regular season.  I’ll need to refine some of those cutoffs further to get them in line for projections in 2017 and beyond.  This will take some time, but as I compare 2016’s comp picks to 2015 hopefully I can get closer.  There are also some snap adjustment tweaks I need to make as I didn’t have all of the comp picks in the right order, but those were very minor errors and none of them caused a player to be projected in the wrong round.

For the record, here were my errors on some of the cutoffs:

• 5th/6th: Originally projected at $4,210,067 adjusted APY, it must have been at least $4,580,000 (Vince Wilfork), but no lower than $4,990,000 (Eddie Royal).
• 6th/7th: Originally projected at $3,014,251 adjusted APY, it must have been at least $200,000 lower to fit in Brice McCain and Akeem Ayers as 6ths. Unfortunately, since there’s no information on players after them, I’ll have to look solely at the 2015 comp picks further to get a good idea here.
• 7th/Qualifying: Originally projected at $733,838 adjusted APY, it must have been at least $778,000 (Alex Carrington not qualifying), but no higher than $822,000 (Sam Acho qualifying).

To wrap this up, there were two unusual results of the 2016 compensatory picks, one that I expected, and one that I didn’t:

• The real shocker was that 33 comp picks were awarded instead of 32.  I don’t believe there has ever been a number of comp picks awarded that did not match the number of teams in the league.  I’m completely stumped on why this happened, and if anyone has any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.  (And no, it had nothing to do with the Patriots’ forfeited 1st rounder for Deflategate, let alone any conspiracy theory that the 33rd pick being New England’s was somehow a mea culpa by the league.  Remember, Kansas City and Atlanta also forfeited picks due to rulebreaking.  Furthermore, when the Patriots forfeited their 1st rounder in 2008 for Spygate, 32 comp picks were awarded as usual.)
• What I did possibly anticipate on several instances, however, was that this would be the first year in which no 7th round compensatory picks were awarded.  This is due to a record number of eligible compensatory picks (anywhere from 41 to 43), and it’s probably why the press release didn’t bother with listing out all the teams that missed out on lower comp picks.  It could also be evidence, as I’ve said before, that more and more teams are working the compensatory formula to their benefit.  Because there were no 7th round compensatory picks, that will mean that, unless they trade the pick, Mr. Irrelevant will be drafted by the Super Bowl 50 champion Denver Broncos.