As I noted earlier this week, the Patriots have a lot of Draft Value in the 2019 Draft. In fact, as of now — which is not going to hold, since the Patriots always make draft day trades — they have more draft capital than any other defending Super Bowl champion since the ’03 Patriots. The ’03 Patriots traded with the Ravens (who were trading up for Kyle Boller) during the ’03 Draft for Baltimore’s 2004 1st round pick. That gave the defending Super Bowl champions two first round picks, which they used on Vince Wilfork and Ben Watson.

Below is the draft capital each Super Bowl champion had in the draft immediately following their Super Bowl victory. I put the six Patriots teams in red.

The 1998 Broncos (in orange and blue) had extra 2nd and 3rd round picks in 1999. Denver traded backup offensive lineman Jamie Brown to the 49ers for San Francisco’s 2nd round pick in ’99 and backup quarterback Jeff Lewis to Carolina for the Panthers ’99 3rd round pick.

The other notable team of recent vintage is the ’91-’92 Redskins, who also had an extra first round pick. The Chargers, back in 1991, sent their 1992 1st round pick to Washington to acquire the Redskins 2nd round pick in the ’91 Draft and draft OG Eric Moten (the Chargers also got back Washington’s ’92 5th round pick). That article alone is worth the read just for the snark.

Going back in time, with fewer teams, more defending Super Bowl champions had more draft value. And teams used to be much more willing to make bad draft related trades to good franchises, so I’m not surprised that a bunch of older Super Bowl champions had good draft value. But for modern times, what the ’18-’19 Patriots have done is noteworthy.