NFL Draft: How do the teams work out the value of each pick?

As things stand, going into the 2025 NFL Draft on April 24, all 32 teams in the league currently hold their own, original first-round draft picks.

This isn’t usually the case. Nor is it likely to remain the case in the hours before and during round one on Thursday in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Ordinarily, we see a handful of teams agree to trade their picks with one another. Some seek to move higher in the draft to ensure they are able to grab the prospect they have set their eye on.

Some, perhaps feeling there are no standout players likely to be available when they are set to make their pick, look to trade back, picking up extra selections in the later rounds – or in future drafts – from a team keen to switch places.

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But when it comes to trading one draft pick for another, how do teams calculate the value of the picks they are trading away or trading for?

How, for example, did the Minnesota Vikings last year come to decide it was worth handing the New York Jets their third and fourth-round picks in order move up from 11th place in the first round to 10th, where they selected quarterback JJ McCarthy?

Well, the truth is not every team determines the value of draft capital in the same way. But all will use a trade value chart equivalent to the one first drawn up by former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson more than three decades ago.

Johnson’s chart assigned a numerical value to every pick in the draft, from No.1 overall (3,000 points) right the way through to the last selection in the sixth round (two points).

A trade is considered generally fair for both parties when the picks one team is willing to exchange add up to the same chart value as the picks the other team is prepared to swap.

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So a team wanting to trade up to, say, the third overall pick would have to put together a package of assets equal to the value assigned to that pick, which on Johnson’s chart is 2,200.

If the team hoping to move up owns a pick within the top 10, trading places is more achievable because their own pick still has a relatively high value (pick No.10 is priced at 1,300), so fewer additional assets are required.

Trading up from further back, however, is much more difficult. Pick No.20, for example, is worth just 850 points, and so multiple later picks, and likely even selection from future drafts, have to be included.

What’s more, as with any negotiation, desperate teams can be exploited and fleeced to give up extra value if their trade partner knows their options are limited. This might be the case, for example, if a team is in dire need of a quarterback – the position that carries by far the biggest premium – and the current draft class is short of top-rated signal callers.

Several NFL teams still abide by Johnson’s trade chart, while many have tasked their analytics departments with devising their own versions.

As such, trades that appear to happen in an instant on draft night have often been agonised over, plotted and negotiated for weeks before they are finally executed.

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