How the league works
Updated
Independent desk. Figures are traced to named sources and corrections are logged — see the editorial policy.
Eighteen teams that missed the playoffs pick first, then the playoff teams in the order they were eliminated. Ties are settled by a schedule formula, not a coin.
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The first round of the NFL draft has 32 selections, and the order looks like a simple ranking of the league from worst to best. It is not quite that. The order is built in two blocks, and a team's place inside a block depends on how its season ended, not only on its record.
Block one: picks 1 to 18
Fourteen teams make the playoffs, seven per conference. The 18 teams that do not make it pick first, in reverse order of regular-season record: the team with the worst record picks first, the best of the non-qualifiers picks 18th.
Block two: picks 19 to 32
The 14 playoff teams pick next, ordered by how far they got:
- Picks 19–24 go to the six teams that lost in the wild-card round.
- Picks 25–28 go to the four teams that lost in the divisional round.
- Picks 29 and 30 go to the two conference-championship losers.
- Pick 31 belongs to the Super Bowl loser and pick 32 to the champion.
Inside each round block, teams are sorted by regular-season record, again worst first. So the best regular-season team among the wild-card losers still picks ahead of a divisional-round loser, and a 14–3 team that lost on wild-card weekend picks 24th at the latest.
What happens when two teams have the same record
Equal records are common, especially in the middle of the first round. The first tiebreaker is strength of schedule: the combined winning percentage of the opponents a team faced. The team that played the weaker schedule picks earlier, on the logic that its record was easier to earn. If the schedules are equal, the league moves down a list of further tiebreakers — head-to-head results, record within the division, record in common games and record within the conference — and uses a coin toss only as the final step.
Compensatory picks sit at the end of rounds
A separate set of selections is awarded to teams that lost more or better free agents than they signed. These compensatory picks come at the end of rounds three through seven, and no more than 32 are handed out in a year. They can be traded like any other pick, and they are one reason the later rounds are not exactly 32 selections long.
Picks are assets, so the order moves
Clubs trade selections freely, including future-year picks, so the team holding a slot is often not the team that earned it. The slot itself, though, is fixed by the formula above. When a trade is announced the number stays the same and only the name next to it changes, which is why draft analysts talk about "the No. 5 pick" as a thing separate from its owner.
The clock also differs by round: in the first round each team has ten minutes to make its selection, and the time allowed shrinks in the later rounds.