At the annual NFL owner’s meetings, the Denver Broncos will find out the number of compensatory NFL Draft selections they’ll be awarded this year for a complicated free agent formula that is calculated based on last year’s free agency results.
The formula for calculating compensatory picks is something that NFL teams can’t even get a grasp of, but Overthecap.com has done a good job in the past of projecting them, and this year they have projected the Broncos to have four additional picks in this year’s draft.
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“That’s our calculation,” John Elway said, though he was unsure of what rounds the picks would come in. Due to the salary cap coming in where it did, a complicated piece of the formula could be a huge determining factor of whether or not T.J. Ward will count against the Broncos as a fourth or fifth round pick. Here, OTC explains:
“Most of the questions center around whether players will qualify at all for the formula. There are also smaller questions regarding which round certain players may be valued as, and it is likely I will be off on some of them. The main serious question mark that I see right now focuses on TJ Ward, going from Cleveland to Denver for an APY of $5.625 million. Since the projected cutoff between the fourth and fifth round is around $5.7 million, it would suggest that Ward would barely count as a 5th rounder against Denver. However, since Ward was named to the Pro Bowl it appears likely that he will end up as a 4th anyway due to the postseason honors boost. The reason this matters for Denver is because if Ward is a 5th instead of a 4th, he will cancel out a lower-valued player and give the Broncos a higher pick.”
So, depending where the NFL places Ward, the Broncos will either receive a fourth round pick for Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie (Giants) or a sixth round pick for Knowshon Moreno (Dolphins).
Either way, it would be a shock at this point for the Broncos to not receive four compensatory picks after losing Zane Beadles, Eric Decker, Rodgers-Cromartie, Knowshon Moreno, Robert Ayers, Shaun Phillips, Jeremy Mincey, and Wesley Woodyard.
The fact that the team expects to receive four compensatory picks is pretty much all you need to know, and the Broncos were among the largest differences in the league of player’s lost (8) and players gained (3).
This would be a huge development for the Broncos, who desperately need a large influx of draft picks on the roster. They have plenty of needs heading into the later portion of March, and adding talented rookies across the board will be huge.