Do NFL teams adjust internal trade charts based on how a draft class is perceived?

New York Times

02-04-2025

The 2025 NFL draft class is widely regarded as as one of the weakest in recent memory, which could have significant impacts on trade charts and draft-day deals.
The Dallas Cowboys currently hold the No. 12 overall pick, but with several potential starters expected to be available on the second day of the draft, should Jerry Jones trade down to secure an extra day two pick?
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With the lack of excitement surrounding this year's class, will teams adjust their trade charts accordingly? This was one listener's question that Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen (and executive producer Michael Beller) delved into on the latest Monday Mailbag episode of 'The Athletic Football Show.'
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on YouTube below or in 'The Athletic Football Show' feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Michael: Randy Lee, coming with our first question, said, 'I've heard a number of people describe this year's draft by saying, 'All the players from about 10 to 50 are the same,' which sounds about right to me. Although I want my team to trade back from 12, (so this is a Cowboys fan) I can't believe that you would get very much in return this year. So my question is this, assuming the teams agree that players from around 10 to 50 have very little difference, have they modified their internal trade value charts to reflect that in this class?' Robert, why don't you take this one first?
Robert: I really liked the question to the point where I reached out to a couple of people just to ask. People in analytics departments and people who handle trade value charts. The responses were what I thought they were going to be. The chart itself doesn't change, but the premium you're willing to pay on the chart changes based on circumstances. The same way that if you were trading up for the number one pick because you wanted a quarterback, there would be a premium you'd have to pay for that. Or even if you're trading in the top five for a quarterback, it's understood that there's markup on those sorts of trades. If there's an understanding that the talent level is flat for a good portion of the draft, you take the opposite approach where there's a lack of a premium. Maybe if you'd pay 1.5 times as much to get the quarterback, here you'd pay 0.8 times as much based on the chart. The chart itself doesn't change, but what you're willing to pay to make the trade changes.
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Derrik: That makes a lot of sense. I didn't come at this from that angle — what are the premiums you're willing to pay and all that stuff. I came at it from the angle of, 'This is probably true in more draft classes than you would want to believe.' Where there is a drop off of elite players after 12 or 13. I think it was the Kyle Hamilton draft (in 2022), where Hamilton went (to the Baltimore Ravens with the No. 14 pick), the next pick was Kenyon Green (to the Houston Texans with the No. 15 pick), and then there were almost no good players after that.
Robert: That's even more than you typically think in a given draft. He was picked in the middle half of the first round.
Derrik: Exactly. So that dynamic exists more than we would want to believe. Because the draft is, truthfully, all about selling hope to people. Realistically, in most draft classes, the number can slightly shift from around nine to 14 of how many truly special prospects there are. For the most part, once you get to the back half of the first round, you do start to get into the territory where pick 20 is no different than pick 45. It just becomes the eye of the beholder. Even in last year's class, were Xavier Legette (No. 32 overall pick by the Carolina Panthers) or Ricky Pearsall (the No. 31 overall pick by the San Francisco 49ers) actual first-round prospects? Probably not. It's just that once you're picking in that range of the first round, it becomes the eye of the beholder for any of those 50 prospects.
Robert: It's funny that you say this because I think this idea has been baked into the way modern draft charts are built, period. The way this jumped to the top of my brain as we were preparing for this show, and there's a question we're going to answer later about the Jahmyr Gibbs pick. If you look at the trade down with the Detroit Lions when they went from six to 12, in part of that deal, they moved up from 81 to 34. If you look at the Fitzgerald-Spielberger chart on Over the Cap, which is a smoother chart than the Jimmy Johnson chart, and probably a little bit more true to how these things are actually valued, going from 34 to 81 in terms of points is actually a fifth-round pick. You would think that type of jump from the bottom half of the third round to the top of the second round would be worth more than the chart would say is a fifth-round pick, but that's not the case. So there really is more of a smoothness to this than people probably think, especially when you get outside of the tippy top of the draft.
You can listen to full episodes of 'The Athletic Football Show' for free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and watch on YouTube.