Why the Detroit Lions won’t receive any compensatory draft selections in 2024
The NFL takes multiple steps to level the playing field for its clubs and is always striving for league balance. A situation where a team loses more assets than it gets can arise because unrestricted free agents are free to depart their teams during the offseason. In order to compensate for the shortfall, the NFL established compensatory draft picks, which teams can use in the next offseason to make up the difference.
The league keeps the precise mechanism for allocating picks a secret, but Nick Korte of OverTheCap developed a technique that is remarkably good at projecting the distribution of compensatory picks. You can read his complete compensatory pick approach or view our cliff notes version from the 2022 offseason if you’re curious about the specifics of the forecast.
With a little assistance from OverTheCap 2024 forecasts, we need to take a closer look at Detroit’s 2023 free agency period to understand why the Lions were not selected:
Although the OTC chart gives the impression that picks are allocated and offset one to one, this is only done for visual clarity. It’s crucial to remember that the compensating formula takes into account a team’s entire free agency window when determining final judgments.
The Lions are projected to have lost four unrestricted free agents, which might have resulted in a return equivalent to four late-round draft selections, according to the OTC chart. Sadly, Detroit also acquired five players whose values exceed those possible gains. This indicates that the NFL feels the Lions did not require any further compensation in 2024 because they had more wins than defeats in 2023.
Furthermore, there is no punishment for enhancing a team’s roster because it is every team’s objective in the league to improve during the offseason. Thus, despite having higher profits in 2023, the Lions do not forfeit any draft picks.