How the NFL Draft Works

Fans at the Draft

While millions of fans are only able to watch the draft on television, there are a few who attend the event. These fans cheer and jeer just as they would if they were sitting in the stands on game day. Registration for the event is free and available to fans on the NFL OnePass app.

The NFL Draft is always held in April, which happens to be halfway between the date of the Super Bowl and the beginning of training camp in July. The exact dates for the draft varies from year to year.

The draft consists of seven rounds, with round one held on Thursday, rounds two and three on Friday, and rounds four through seven on Saturday. The average round consists of 32 picks, which allows each team approximately one pick per round. Some teams have more than one pick in a round, and some teams may not have any picks in a round. Picks per team vary because draft picks can be traded to other teams, and the NFL can award additional picks to a team if the team loses players designated as restricted free agents.

A free agent is a player whose contract has expired and is eligible to sign with another team. A restricted free agent is a player for whom another team can make an offer, but his current team is allowed to match that offer. If the current team chooses not to match the offer, it may receive compensation in the form of a draft choice. The NFL awards compensatory picks based on the net loss of restricted free agents. The limit for compensatory picks is four per team.

Due to compensatory picks and the addition of expansion teams, the total number of picks has varied since the draft was reduced to seven rounds in 1994. Since the change in 1994, the 2003 and 2023 NFL Drafts are tied for the most players selected: 262. Between 1977 and 1993, the draft consisted of 12 rounds, and from 1967 to 1976 there were 17 rounds per draft.

Within each round, each team takes its turn in selecting a player. In the next section, we will take a closer look at how the selection process works.

As soon as the game clock at the Super Bowl expires, a new clock starts ticking. That's the clock that ticks down to the first player selected in the NFL draft in April. When a team is on the clock, it means that it has the next selection in the draft and has a set amount of time to make a selection.

While the team with the first selection is on the clock from the end of January, which is when the Super Bowl is played, the clock begins for real on draft day.

During the draft, one team is always on the clock. In round one, teams have 10 minutes to make their choice. The decision time drops to seven minutes in the second round, five minutes in rounds three through six, and four minutes in round seven. If a team doesn't make a decision in its given time, the next team can pick before them, and the team that missed its turn can submit its selection at any time after their time is up — but they run the risk of losing a player they were considering to another team.

A team's draft position is in reverse correlation with the success it achieved on the field during the previous year, which is why the team with the worst record has the first pick of each round and the Super Bowl champion has the last pick. This is the default draft position for these teams unless they choose to trade their picks.

Nonplayoff teams get to draft before the teams that made the playoffs of the previous season. If teams share the same record, there are standard criteria for breaking ties. The first thing considered is strength of schedule — the combined win-loss record of the teams they played the previous season; the team whose opponents had the lower winning record goes first. If there's still a tie, divisional and conference records are compared. If there's still a tie, a series of other metrics are compared, culminating (if all else fails) in a coin toss.

In the next section, we will go inside a team's draft day war room and see how selections are made.

Teams begin assessing the abilities of college players months if not years prior to the NFL draft. Scouts, coaches, general managers, and sometimes even team owners compile statistics and notes in their evaluation of hundreds of college football's best players before they make their selection.

The NFL Scouting Combine in February is another chance for teams to get familiar with the players. The combine is an annual event where more than 300 of the top draft-eligible players are invited to showcase their abilities. The combine is also when the media and fans begin focusing their attention on draft day.

After assessing the players, teams will make their wish lists for the players they want to draft. Then they determine their alternative selections because, unless a team has the top two or three picks in the draft, drafting any particular player is not guaranteed.

Mr. Irrelevant

Just as someone has to be the first pick in the draft, someone has to be last. This player is given the dubious moniker of Mr. Irrelevant. Although it sounds insulting, there are hundreds of players who wish they were in this player's shoes.

Mr. Irrelevant is actually the most celebrated player outside of the first round. In fact, he is the only player in the draft to have a formal celebration thrown in his honor. In 1976 Paul Salata, a former receiver for the Baltimore Colts, arranged an annual event in Newport Beach, CA, called Irrelevant Weekto celebrate the last player selected in each draft.

After being flown to California, Mr. Irrelevant is paraded through Newport Beach. He'll then spend the next week going to Disneyland, attending a baseball game, and other activities. Each Mr. Irrelevant also receives the Lowsman Trophy, a small bronze statue of a player fumbling a ball. The Lowsman is the antithesis of the Heisman Trophy, which is given annually to the best player in college football.

On draft day, the team's key personnel huddles together in a room, known as the War Room. It's in this room that the decision is made about whom to draft. The selection is then relayed to a team representative, who submits the selection to an NFL official such as the commissioner, who then announces the selection.

Some teams, especially those with a high draft selection, may determine their first-round selection far in advance of the draft and may even have settled on contract terms with the player. In this case, the draft is just a formality, and the player need only sign the contract to make it official.

Once the draft begins, teams pay close attention to the selections made by the teams ahead of them in the draft order. Sometimes, a team that has already determined its selection may have to scramble to pick someone else because the player it wanted was unexpectedly drafted by another team.

In the next section, we'll outline who is eligible to be drafted, and we'll take a look at the draft experience from a player's perspective.

A Long Shot

Almost every athlete that plays high school football dreams of one day playing in the NFL, but for most players that dream is never realized. The hard truth is that the NFL has a finite number of jobs, and only the most talented are selected to fill those positions.

One million high school students participate in football annually, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Very few of those players, only 7.3 percent, will play college football. It's an even longer shot that a high school player will eventually play for an NFL team. Assuming they make it onto a college team, from there only 1.6 percent of players get drafted into the NFL, according to the NCAA.

Teams can draft almost anyone they want. In fact, the Dallas Cowboys have drafted two players with no football experience — Olympic gold-medallists Carl Lewis in 1984 (twelfth round) and Bob Hayes in 1964 (seventh round). Hayes took the ball and ran with it, while Lewis turned down the Cowboys for more Olympic gold.

While athletes from other sports sometimes are drafted, the majority of the players drafted are those who played college football. One of the few draft rules is that underclass players are prohibited from entering the draft until three college football seasons have passed since their high school graduation. This means that almost all freshmen and some sophomores cannot be drafted.

The deadline for underclassmen, sophomores and juniors to declare themselves eligible for the NFL draft is in January. Once a player declares for the draft, they forego their remaining eligibility to play college football, which means that once they declare for the draft they cannot return to play in college.

On draft day, hundreds of players wait for their names to be announced. Some of the players who are likely to be drafted in the first round are invited to attend the draft. These are the players who you see going up on stage when their names are called, putting on the team hat, and having their picture taken holding a team jersey.

These first-round players wait backstage in the green room with their family and friends, along with their agents. Some won't be called until the second round, and with less fanfare. Draft position is important to players and their agents because the higher selections get paid more than players chosen later in the draft.

There are lots of players whose phone doesn't ring on draft day. For these players, it is an uphill battle to play in the NFL, but not an impossible task. There's always next year. That's what the draft is all about — hope.