National Football League

Seahawks projected to be awarded two compensatory draft picks

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 6:22 p.m. ET

Fansided, Keith Myers/FanSided via 12th Man Rising

After losing a bunch of talent in free agency a year ago, the Seattle Seahawks are expected to be given 2 compensatory draft pick for the 2017 draft.

Compensatory draft picks are awards to teams that lose qualifying free agents to other teams, and are not able to replace them by signing free agents of their own. The round is based on the salary of the new contract, with minor adjustments made based on playing time and impact.

The key word in that above paragraph is “qualifying.” Not all free agents signed or lost count. Most do not figure into the formula at all.

To count, a player must be a free agent because their contract expired. They cannot have been cut or waived, and they cannot be entering the NFL as an undrafted free agent or from the CFL. They must also sign a contract above an arbitrary minimum salary. Typically it is around $1million per season.

The exact formula for awarding these picks is a closely guarded secret. That hasn’t stopped some people, most notably the guys from OverTheCap, from trying to reverse engineer the process.

The Seahawks are projected to be awarded a pair of draft picks this year. The first is a 3rd round pick for the loss of Bruce Irvin to the Raiders. The second is a 5th round pick for losing JR Sweezy to Tampa Bay.

Losing Brandon Mebane to the Chargers was cancelled out by signing Bradley Sowell. Russell Okung’s contract with Denver was cancelled out by J’Marcus Webb’s addition to Seattle’s roster. The Seahawks definitely did not get their money’d worth on those two exchanges.

Every other player added or lost by the Seahawks were players that did not qualify for the compensatory draft pick formula.

Seattle’s free agent cancellation chart for comp picks, per @Jason_OTC pic.twitter.com/9iVCxT9gvi

— 12th Man Rising (@12thMan_Rising) January 29, 2017

The compensatory picks come after the native 32 picks for that round. For the first time, compensatory draft picks are now tradeable assets. That should give the Seahawks some additional flexibility in the draft this year.