The NFL Draft is supposed to help promote parity in the league. By giving the teams with the worst records the best draft picks, all teams are pushed to regress towards the mean over time. The Jaguars and Jets were the worst two teams in the 2020 NFL season, and they have the first two picks in the 2021 NFL Draft, giving those organizations a chance to land franchise-altering quarterbacks.
But the third pick belongs to the Miami Dolphins, as the last bit of compensation in the Laremy Tunsil trade. Miami is the rare team that was both good last year and has a ton of draft capital, which could set the team up for long-term success.
Yesterday, the NFL released the final order for the entire 2021 NFL Draft. Using both the traditional, Jimmy Johnson draft chart and the Football Perspective Draft Value Chart, below is how much draft capital each organization has, from most to least.
| Rk | Team | JJ Draft Value | FP Draft Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jacksonville Jaguars | 5195.9 | 92.7 |
| 2 | New York Jets | 4499.8 | 82.5 |
| 3 | Miami Dolphins | 4274.0 | 75.9 |
| 4 | Atlanta Falcons | 2767.4 | 57.6 |
| 5 | Philadelphia Eagles | 2618.2 | 55.1 |
| 6 | Dallas Cowboys | 2214.4 | 53.1 |
| 7 | Detroit Lions | 2416.2 | 53 |
| 8 | Cincinnati Bengals | 2594.8 | 52.6 |
| 9 | Minnesota Vikings | 1683.4 | 50.6 |
| 10 | Los Angeles Chargers | 2012.4 | 49.6 |
| 11 | Las Vegas Raiders | 1869.6 | 49.2 |
| 12 | Carolina Panthers | 2250.8 | 48.5 |
| 13 | New England Patriots | 1795.9 | 48.3 |
| 14 | Denver Broncos | 2196.6 | 47.4 |
| 15 | San Francisco 49ers | 1907.2 | 45.7 |
| 16 | Washington Football Team | 1739.2 | 45.2 |
| 17 | Cleveland Browns | 1435.8 | 45 |
| 18 | New York Giants | 2026.0 | 43.2 |
| 19 | Tennessee Titans | 1500.8 | 42.7 |
| 20 | Green Bay Packers | 1181.1 | 37.8 |
| 21 | Pittsburgh Steelers | 1330.0 | 36.9 |
| 22 | Kansas City Chiefs | 1121.0 | 36.7 |
| 23 | New Orleans Saints | 1195.7 | 36.1 |
| 24 | Chicago Bears | 1451.8 | 35 |
| 25 | Baltimore Ravens | 1175.2 | 34.8 |
| 26 | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 1043.1 | 31.5 |
| 27 | Buffalo Bills | 1095.0 | 31.4 |
| 28 | Indianapolis Colts | 1239.4 | 31 |
| 29 | Arizona Cardinals | 1437.4 | 29 |
| 30 | Los Angeles Rams | 611.3 | 23.8 |
| 31 | Houston Texans | 422.0 | 20 |
| 32 | Seattle Seahawks | 383.0 | 12.7 |
The Seahawks have the least amount of draft capital, after trading their first and third round picks to the Jets for safety Jamal Adams, along with Seattle’s 2022 first round pick. That helps the Jets have the second most draft capital in 2021, and it would have been the most if the Jaguars didn’t also have the Rams first round pick as part of the Jalen Ramsey trade. So this is a pretty unusual year, where the teams with the first and second overall picks also had an extra first round pick. And the team with the third overall pick also has another first round pick; as a result, there’s a wide gap between the draft value held by the top three teams and the rest of the league.
It’s also interesting to plot team strength vs. draft capital. To measure team strength, I’m using PFR’s 2020 Simple Rating System, which takes points differential and adjusts for strength of schedule. I prefer to use this rather than just 2020 team record, as a team’s SRS rating is more predictive of future success. In the graph below, 2020 SRS rating is on the X-Axis, from left to right in increasing order of strength. Draft capital (as measured by the Football Perspective Draft Value Chart) is in increasing order from bottom to top on the Y-Axis.
As you can see, Miami stands alone in the upper right quadrant of the graph, which is a nice place to be. Conversely, the Texans are in a league of their own creation as well, in the lower left.
If you are wondering about Atlanta also sticking out, that’s mostly because the team was much better than its 2020 record. While the Falcons do have a few extra fifth round picks due to the compensatory free agent process, Atlanta was slightly above average despite its 4-12 record and wound up with the fourth overall pick. Through 13 games, Atlanta was 4-9 but with a positive points differential, before dropping its final three games to the Super Bowl teams (losing by 4 to Tampa Bay, by 3 to Kansas City, and then losing by 17 to Tampa Bay but in a game that was a 3-point margin with four minutes to play).