2010 RULES: Multiple Picks in a Round Compensation

[Goodell]

With the complexity of the NFL's rules, often we try to do our best to replicate them here but may not know the full specifics of every rule situation until it happens in reality and a story written about it that sheds more light on rule specifics.

According to the Seattle Times, the Seahawks would send the No. 6 overall pick in the draft to Denver if they signed Brandon Marshall to a restricted free agent offer sheet.
The sides could always work out something different, but the direct offer-sheet compensation would be the 6th pick because Seattle acquired its other first-rounder (No. 14) via trade.

I believe we've always allowed it to be the lowest of your picks as the automatic compensation if you had multiple picks in the same round and you were required to give up a pick in that round as compensation.

In reality, and not sure if it's part of the temporary NFL rules or not but probably not, seems like it is your ORIGINAL team pick as the one to use if you still have that pick.

I don't know if it's a big deal, but if we automate that process and it probably needs to be for long-term success of the league I'd have to build in the conditions of which pick gets exchanged by default.

Of course, teams have always been able to and will remain with having the ability to negotiate a slightly different compensation -- such as deciding between themselves that it's the higher pick in the round than the lower if both teams agree -- but this would just get written in as the default compensation if a team has multiple picks in the same round and must give one of them up as compensation for a signed RFA/Franchise player.

[Royce R]

I voted for the change. Sounds good and I never knew that.

But if you don't own your own pick does it revert back to the lowest pick like we used to do it?

So many teams don't keep their orig.

[Goodell]

I voted for the change. Sounds good and I never knew that.

But if you don't own your own pick does it revert back to the lowest pick like we used to do it?

So many teams don't keep their orig.

If we can find the actual rules related to that, we could go with the actual rules as preferred to keep things real. But if we don't know the offical rule in that case I think we'd likely just use the lowest pick as we have before if a team didn't have their original instead.

[Goodell]

By popular vote and in accordance to reality, we'll institute the NFL's rule about using a team's ORIGINAL pick as the default compensation if they have more than one draft pick in a compensation round instead of how we've done it in the past with just going with the lowest pick being used. If a team has multiple picks in a round but none are their original ones, we'll use the lowest as the default as before.