This article refers specifically to OTC’s projection for the 2018 NFL Draft’s compensatory picks. For details on the basics and methodology of projecting compensatory picks in general, please reference this article.

To understand how this projection is generated for each team, please reference the compensatory picks cancellation charts here.

UPDATE – January 17: Two minor corrections have been made to the APY of Justin Pugh and AJ McCarron. Please reference the two tweets linked on their names to learn more.

The Projection

Note that although there are 39 eligible compensatory picks listed in this projection, each year only exactly 32 picks are awarded. Therefore, the picks that rank 33rd and lower are not awarded, although the official release will typically acknowledge their presence, as this list does with strikethrough text.

Compensatory picks became tradeable beginning with the 2017 NFL Draft. This year, there has been one such trade thus far, with the Rams slated to send the higher of their two projected 3rd round comp pick to the Jaguars in exchange for Dante Fowler.

I expect the official release to come out on February 22, the Friday before the 2019 NFL Scouting Combine. Releasing the list then is sensible, as it allows executives at the Combine to discuss possible trades with full knowledge of their draft capital.

Cutoff Projections

It was suggested via the resolution allowing comp picks to be traded on December 2, 2015 that the cutoffs between each rounds and whether or not a player had an APY high enough to qualify was determined by a “rank[ing] against all players in the League who are on rosters at the end of the season”. I have conjectured from this evidence that the cutoffs are based on a percentile system. After refining the OTC’s program following the official release of the 2017 compensatory picks, it’s my guess that the percentiles operate on even percentages divisible by five, as illustrated in the table below.

At the end of the 2018 regular season, OTC’s database identified a total of 1924 players that were either on the active roster or reserve lists, and had also played in at least 10 games during the 2018 regular season. As explained in the general methodology in the previous link, the cutoffs for each round and for qualifying as a compensatory free agent (CFA) have been established by this projection on certain percentile ranks of all players on the active roster and reserve lists at the end of the regular season, sorted by APY adjusted for snap counts in descending order and also represented by the player at the cutoff point. For 2018, these cutoffs are as follows:

Round Percentile Overall Rank Representative Player 3rd/4th 95th (top 5%) 96 Luke Kuechly 4th/5th 90th (top 10%) 192 Aaron Colvin 5th/6th 85th (top 15%) 289 Golden Tate 6th/7th 75th (top 25%) 481 Leighton Vander Esch 7th/Qualify 50th (top 50%) 962 Ryan Hewitt

Players On The Cutoff Bubbles

While it is my hope that my projection of where the cutoffs lie is correct, there is enough of a margin of error that the players that are very close to them may fall on the opposite side of where I have them projected. In most cases, if I’m wrong it means that the team in question will still get a comp pick for that player, but that it may be in a round higher or lower. But in a few cases (those are bolded), it could change cancellations, possibly taking away or greatly devaluing a projected comp pick—or possibly adding or greatly upgrading a comp pick.

3rd/4th

Ryan Jensen (Baltimore): #71

Projected 3rd/4th cutoff: #96

Donte Moncrief (Indianapolis): #98

Anthony Hitchens (Dallas): #125

4th/5th

Justin Pugh (New York Giants): #180

Projected 3rd/4th cutoff: #192

5th/6th

Danny Amendola (New England): #283

Projected 5th/6th cutoff: #289

6th/7th

Bennie Logan (Kansas City): #451

AJ McCarron (Cincinnati): #467

Projected 6th/7th cutoff: #481

Tramaine Brock (Minnesota): #506

7th/Qualifying

Logan Paulsen (San Francisco): #917

Andre Roberts (Atlanta): #927

Geno Smith (New York Giants): #954

Projected 7th/Qualifying cutoff: #962

Bene Benwikere (Dallas): #971

Tom Compton (Minnesota): #975

Brock Osweiler (Denver): #990

Mike Wallace (Philadelphia): #996

Qualifying/Valuation Questions

Teams are becoming more mindful of the rule where a compensatory free agent will not qualify if they are not on their roster past Week 10 (this year, the Sunday games took place on November 11). This year, notable cuts right before this date were Sam Bradford (cut by Arizona November 3), Deonte Thompson (cut by Dallas November 9), and Patrick Omameh (cut by the New York Giants November 10). I have confidence that all three players will not qualify, but it’s worth making this note just in case something goes wrong with those projections.

Meanwhile, as far as cutoffs go, all of the major close calls hover around which players will or will not qualify as compensatory free agents. Most are straightforward in that they are close to where I have this cutoff estimated at. This has usually been a difficult cutoff to project, so I could be wrong on whether some of those players qualify or not.

But one of these qualification questions is quite convoluted. That’s the contract Mike Wallace signed with Philadelphia after leaving Baltimore. Wallace’s contract was first reported as a 1 year deal for “up to $4 million“. Then, it got revised down to “$2.5 million with incentives“. Then it was discovered that the 200-pound Wallace had a $585,000 weight bonus achieved for weighing under 250 pounds. And finally, it was discovered that Wallace’s $1 million signing bonus is an Other Amount Treated As Signing Bonus that’s believed to be a guaranteed workout bonus.

This is a blatant attempt by Eagles GM Howie Roseman to push Wallace’s value in the compensatory formula down so far that he does not qualify as a compensatory free agent, since workout bonuses, weight bonuses, and incentives do not count in the formula. Combine Wallace’s base salary of $915,000 with the fact that he played very few snaps due to going on injured reserve early in the season, and it appears that Roseman may succeed in his goal. By following the known rules of the compensatory formula, I’m projecting that Wallace will not qualify. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if the NFL Management Council sees things differently, for if this is correct, Philadelphia has blazed a new trail in how teams can manipulate the formula to their benefit.

Possible Altering Scenarios