Front Office Football Central - NFL Draft Positions

I did not realize that the NFL draft positions changed in later rounds. I thought if you were picking #23 in the draft, you were picking #23 in every round subsequent.

But apparently there are some tie-breaker issues that mix it up. I never knew this.

Check this out from www.buccaneers.com

Quote:

Jan 27, 2006 -

How much you enjoyed last Sunday’s AFC Championship Game between Pittsburgh and Denver probably depended upon whether you were rooting for the Steelers or the Broncos. Non-attached NFL fans might simply have wished for a closer game.

Tampa Bay Buccaneer fans, however, actually had a reason to cheer for the Steelers. Admittedly, it was a very minor reason, but still one worth noting after Pittsburgh did indeed upset the home-team Broncos on Sunday.

See, by virtue of the Pittsburgh win, the Buccaneers’ draft position improved by a small fraction.

The Bucs won’t be any better off in the first round – they became locked into the 23rd slot when they lost in the Wild Card round of the playoffs and Carolina won – but the subsequent rounds will be affected. Here’s why:

By defeating the Broncos and advancing to Super Bowl XL, the Steelers locked themselves into one of the last two spots in the draft. The reigning Super Bowl champion always picks last while the runner-up picks second-to-last (in this case, 31st). That drops Pittsburgh out of the segment of six teams tied in the draft order due to 11-5 records in 2005. The Buccaneers are one of those six teams.

Ties within segments are broken by team’s strength of schedule – that is, the combined winning percentage of the teams they played the previous year. Before the conference championship games last weekend, the six 11-5 teams were ranked like this in the draft order:

23. Tampa Bay
24. Cincinnati
25. N.Y. Giants
26. Chicago
27. Carolina
28. Pittsburgh

The order has been shuffled a bit since it first was released thanks to various teams’ playoff advancement, or lack thereof. However, while a team can move down the order by advancing farther in the postseason than the other teams in its segment, it can’t drop out of that segment unless it reaches the Super Bowl.

Which is what Pittsburgh did.

Thus, the Bucs are now at the top of a segment of five tied teams. Why is that relevant? Well, beginning with the second round, this order starts to rotate. The team at the top drops to the bottom and the other teams all move up one spot. Therefore – here’s the big payoff! – the Bucs will now drop to 27th in the second round instead of 28th.

Like we said, it’s not an earth-shaking change. Then again, every little bit helps. The Bucs will also be one spot higher in each subsequent round than they would have been, picking 26th instead of 27th in the third round for instance, and will get back to the top of the segment one round quicker. The Bucs will be back in the 23rd spot by the sixth round instead of the seventh, then will drop to 27th for the final round.