The Combine is wrapping up today, so we will be firmly in draft season starting next week. Of course that will also coincide with Free agency/Trade season as the NFL year kicks off on the 11th. The NFL is great at remaining relevant even when no games are happening.

Recently, I have seen/heard @chrisliss reinforce the idea that the rounds are arbitrary and the difference between an early first round pick and a late first round pick is much wider than a late first round pick and a mid 2nd round pick. Even though there may be an equal amount of picks between. I completely agree with him and every NFL team does as well.

Teams broadly use a draft valuation model that is credited to former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson that assigns a point value to every position in the draft. If you have never seen it, here is what it looks like:

As you can see here @Undisciplined's Raiders number 1 overall pick is worth 3000 points. Whereas my 49ers 27th overall pick is worth 680 (26 picks later). If we jump forward another 26 picks we get to the Steelers pick 53. Pick 53 is worth 370 points.

Based on this the 49ers pick is worth a bit less than 1/4 what the Raiders pick is worth and the Steelers second round pick is worth a bit more than 1/2 the 49ers pick.

By the time we get to the final pick in the draft the point value is only worth 0.4. Less if you consider comp picks issued along the way. So the team picking last in the draft would theoretically need to trade 7500 Mr Irrelevant picks to move up to number 1. Or you can just draft Brock Purdy and have him be better than the number 1.

Sats for all,
GR