Compensatory Picks

The NFL meetings this week are very important for the upcoming season. Amongst other things, the schedule will be decided upon and released later this week.

Today, the NFL announced the Compensatory Picks for this year's draft.

For those of you who might not be familiar with Comp Picks, here's how they work. The NFL uses a formula of playing time, pay, etc to gauge the relative value of players a team lost in Free Agency in a given year vs the value they gained in Free Agency. After these values are determined, teams that are deemed to have lost more than they gained are awarded extra picks. There are 32 Comp Picks in all, and they can be awarded for any round between the 3rd and 7th. If less than 32 Comp Picks are able to be awarded, the rest of the remaining picks are awarded to the teams at the top of the draft, as if the first round were starting over.

This year, due to the losses of Bryant McFadden, Nate Washington, and Byron Leftwich, the Steelers were awarded 3 compensatory picks. They were given two 5th round picks (picks #164 and #166) and a 7th round pick (pick #242). A full list of the picks can be found here.

Unlike regular draft picks, comp picks can not be traded. However, given that the Steelers now have 3 picks in the 5th round, it is possible they may try to use their 5th round pick in a trade package if they want to move up in an earlier round of the draft. The Steelers have been active in draft-day trades over the past decade, and it would not be surprising to see them make a move this year, either to trade down to acquire more picks, or to trade up to take a player they really want.

Over the next few weeks, the Steelers will be able to bring in up to 30 players for visits. They have already scheduled visits with a few including Idaho guard Mike Iupati, Penn State linebackers Navarro Bowman and Sean Lee, Illinois WR Arrelious Benn, Oregon RB LeGarrette Blount, and Texas FS Earl Thomas. We'll be posting a more in-depth analysis of each player once they come for their visit. We obviously don't have the kind of access to know what goes on in these visits, but we intend to give you a little bit of player background as we did with our Draft Preview series last year.

Go Steelers!