Compensatory Picks
Compensatory draft picks will be given out this week, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday.
This is one of the most underrated aspects of the offseason. Dan Pompeii of the Sporting News wrote a good article about the process a month back.
Tom Brady, Marques Colston, and Chester Taylor were three of the recent interesting compensatory picks. Maurice Clarett is another memorable one. But the part of the article that interested me was how certain teams "play" the compensatory pick game.
The Ravens are great at it. The Patriots are good as well. The way I think about it, the Patriots didn't just lose David Givens last year. They traded him for a mid-round draft pick. Same goes for Adam Vinatieri. That's pretty significant. The Ravens didn't just give up Adalius Thomas this year, they probably got a late-third round 2008 pick for him.
The Patriots know that they are getting a bounty of picks this year, and probably that helped them pull the trigger on the Wes Welker trade. It increases flexibility.
A KFFL user tried to project the picks last week. This is a great effort, but it's an extremely complicated formula that teams can't even completely figure out - the actual picks will probably be much different. We'll find out this week.
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