On March 9, the 2026 compensatory draft picks were released. As always, upon seeing the official release it’s proper to judge how my projection did against it.

Highlighted in green, I got 26 of 32 comp picks correct with the correct player and the correct round. I was also correct on three comp picks that would be eligible, but missed making the 32 pick limit–for a total of 29 out of 35. One of those, Green Bay’s, was not awarded despite anticipating it would be the last pick to make the cut, due to a miss on a different pick. In an unusual move, the NFL did not acknowledge, as it usually does, that Green Bay, the New York Giants, and Denver were eligible for these picks despite not being awarded, but the three players involved (Eric Wilson, Solomon Thomas, and Tremon Smith) were explicitly listed in the release, confirming that these picks were indeed eligible despite missing the cut.

Highlighted in yellow, there were 5 comp picks I got the correct team to, but in my initial projection was off by one round. All four of these misses were just on a standard initial miss of the leaguewide number of players that was used. However, a week before the initial release, I had gotten word that this number was higher than anticipated, and it led me to release this provisional update. This update correctly fixed four of these five misses. It still did not anticipate Talanoa Hufanga’s contract getting upgraded to the 4th round for San Francisco

Highlighted in blue, there was 1 comp pick I got wrong due to projecting an incorrect cancellation, but that I anticipated that I could be wrong. That was Azeez Ojulari not qualifying as a compensatory free agent against Philadelphia, opening up a 6th rounder to the Eagles due to the departure of Isaiah Rodgers.

However, while I anticipated this could happen, the manner in which it did does not make sense to me, and it makes me wonder whether the NFL Management Council made an error in considering some of his incentives. Ojulari had a trio of $250,000 incentives each based if he hit 4, 6, or 8 sacks. Ojulari did not earn any of these, but he did record 6 sacks in 2024. That means that $500,000 of these incentives should have been classified as Likely To Be Earned, and thus counted in the compensatory formula.

This meant that I anticipated Ojulari’s APY under the compensatory formula to to $3.5 million, and not the base of $3 million. However, had it been $3.5 million, Ojulari should have been ranked ahead of the three players whose contracts qualified them as CFAs but their picks failed to make the 32 pick limit in Wilson, Thomas, and Smith–as well as Ifeatu Melifonwu, whose qualification was needed to secure a comp pick for Detroit. This is illustrated below:

However, if this was an error made, the consequences are a net positive that may not be bothered to be corrected. Philadelphia gets a 6th rounder they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten, and Green Bay is only deprived of the Mr. Irrelevant pick that now goes to the Broncos. There would be precedent for not making a correction for such a low 7th from the last draft, when the NFLMC erred in awarding a 7th rounder to Miami instead of New Orleans due to incorrectly listing Cedrick Wilson Jr. as a compensatory free agent. Since granting Green Bay a 33rd regular compensatory pick would require consent by the NFL Players’ Association, my guess would be that it was determined that it was not worth the effort over one more 7th rounder at the end.