Here we are, only a few hours before the start of the NFL 2025 draft and, surprisingly, the 32 teams still have their original first round. Normally, at least one team would have already practiced future assets and had given a first round to ascend in an earlier draft or to acquire a veteran player.
In fact, the duration of the era of the common draft, this is the closest to a draft in which the first round selections have not been negotiated. And although it seems that we will start on Thursday night with the 32 teams keeping its selections, it would be more strange that way. The League has averaged 5.6 exchanges that involve first round selections duration of the draft per year since 2020, and an examination of these agreements produces some surprising observations.
They are not just field marshal
In what position is the NFL teams most likely to use a selection after trade in the first round? Surprise, he is not a field marshal. There are only four of those types of operations in the last five years, and only one in the last three drafts. And it is not a edge corridor, since there are only three of those.
The answer is the receiver. There are eight leg operations in the last five years, double that of any other position. We have seen the market value of the elite receptors explode in recent years, so the opportunity to obtain a higher -price passage receiver with a rookie contract is something that the equipment will actively pay to acquire in the draft. Of the eight receivers, it is worth noting that none has made a single Pro Bowl, thought that Jaylen Waddle, Devonta Smith and Brandon Aiyuk would consider as solid selections, the same.
The 28 players tasks after the teams changed to the first round of the draft of like this: eight receptors, four quarterbacks, four corners, three edges, three offensive cups, two defensive cups, two supporters, two supporters, two supporters, two supporters, two supporters, two supporters, two supporters, two supporters, two supporters. That is 17 in the offensive, 11 in defense, a predictable inclines the positional values throughout the league for first round selections.
Good teams are first round aggressive merchants
Seven NFL teams have changed more than one in the last five drafts, and those seven include the first four seeds in the playoffs last year: the Chiefs, Bills, Eagles and Lions. The other three include the Vikings, which had 14-3 last year as a wild card, and the jets and 49ers, who were left out of breath in the playoffs. Therefore, it could be said that five of the best teams in the NFL classification last year were equipment that have an active bone to climb in the draft.
We are not saying that there is a direct link between the exchange in the first round and the success of the team: the good teams later choose in the first round, when it costs less advance and the teams with Rosway of return loaded to consolidate the elections and risk. These movements do not work, but you can point to the Eagles who exchange for Jalen Carter in 2023 and Jordan Davis in 2022 as a central part of the defensive line that caused his Super Bowl victory.
More than half of the League, 19 teams of 32, has changed less once in the last five silly, and almost so many (18) have changed in the same period of time. The teams that have been exchanged include the Jaguars and the Patriots, both still choose among the top five this year, but also makes sense that a team that stores the low -round teams could not yet the return of that investment.
Selections can bounce quite a lot
If you want to appreciate how much an choice can change hands, consider selection No. 12 in the 2021 draft.
The 49ers had to start and changed it as part of a mass package that they sent to the Dolphins to obtain the field marshal Trey Lance with the No. 3 Selection. The dolphins exchanged the Eagles so that they could carry the receptor Jaylen Waddle in number 6, certainly a better choice than lance. Philadelphia changed selection No. 12 to Dallas to move to No. 10 and take the Devonta Smith receiver, another solid choice. The cowboys, as the fourth owner of Selection No. 12, used it in Micah Parsons, four times Pro Bowler and in the row so that it would soon become the fourth part paid in the history of the League.
San Francisco obviously made a terrible commitment in Lance, of the type that a main office only survives when finding a Quitback in Brock Purdy with the final selection of the seventh round. “Thank God for Mr. Irrelevant,” said the general manager of the 49ers, John Lynch, last year. Miami, as a beneficiary of that Lance agreement, used other selections in packages to obtain the Tyreek Hill receiver and the Bradley Chubb border corridor, and Philadelphia used Miami’s selection to help obtain Davis. Then, the team that plays the biggest bet to the biggest loss, and the most patient team of the four, the cowboys, somehow obtained the best player.
Merchant not always Land Stars
The NFL teams have changed to take the players in the first round 28 times in the last five years. How many of those 28 players would you have to have made a Pro Bowl? We include this sentence only as a shock absorber, so it can formulate an assumption without seeing the response immediately.
The answer is only four. That is less a success rate of 15 percent, and three of the four are defensive rulers: Will Anderson de Houston, Carter of Philadelphia and Jermaine Johnson de los Jets. The only players of players after exchange that have made more than a Pro Bowl is the Buckle Tristan Wirfs Buckle. It is in the leg four, or more than the other 27 combined players.
Trade is perhaps the best of the conviction and belief of a team in the value of a player, but that does not protect the team from being wrong.
First round exchanges mean moving so far or down
The closer a team is for that of the clock, the less you must give up to acquire a selection, so the first round exchanges are of minor shifts and low cost to upload a place or two. Nine of 28 in the last five years have had a team uploading one or two places. As such, the cost of advancing is lower: only five times in the last five years has a team that increases a selection of more than a third round to do so.
Those five, only by reference, are the Texans who jump from 12 to 3 for Anderson in 2023, the lions move from 32 to 12 for the receptor Jameson Williams in 2022, the 49ers and the dolphins are exchanged for Lance and Waddle in just the first year. We must also mention the Titans who renounce the AJ Brown receiver for the first round of the Eagles in 2022 as a significant investment outside the active assets.
Only two first round operations in the last five years have seen teams upload more than nine places: the lions for Williams in 2022, and the chargers move from 37 to 23 for the supporter Kenneth Murray in 2020. Again, advance 10 points at the end of the first round means substantially less than doing it at the top of the first. And quite strangely, the most common distance between the equipment that is negotiated and the equipment that is negotiated is nine places, six of this type in five years.
The choice that a team receives in the exchange is another opportunity in a gem in the middle of the round, but it cannot also resort to anything for quickly. When the Packers uploaded four places to obtain Jordan’s love in 2020, they sent the Dolphins a fourth round selection to do so, and Miami, just after moving in the fourth round, they used that selection at the Solomon Kindley guard, which is out of the league.
The negotiating teams can still get their boy
The teams that change them do it because they have several players on their board that would be happy to obtain, so they will stop obtaining the best of them to add lower selections to improve depth. There is a calculated risk of a player who knows that you could have one that you could get later, but it has worked almost as well as the exchange.
In terms of players who make multiple professional bowls, there are more of the teams that were exchanged than those that are negotiated. The lions moved from 6 to 12 in 2023 and still obtained the Jahmyr Gibbs corridor. The Ravens were reduced two points in 2022 and still obtained the center of Tyler Linderbaum, and the cowboys obtained Parsons after exchanging two places to 12 in 2021. One of last year’s best rookies, the receiver Brian Thomas Jr., went to the Jaguars to them. in them in them in them in them in them in them in them in them in the aggregates in them in the Jaguars in them in the Jaguars in their unin in the addedars in them in the aggregates. Draft of the year.
There are at least four exchanges in the first round in each of the last nine drafts, so I thought it is silent in the leg so far this year, do not wait for the Night of Sameday.
Greg Auman is an NFL reporter for Fox Sports. Previously a decade passed by covering the Bucaneros For him Tampa Bay Times and Atlético. You can follow it on Twitter in @Gregaman.
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