Just about everyone loves the NFL draft. Teams love adding new players to their rosters. Television networks love the spectacle. The media gets something to talk about for six weeks after free agency. Fans love speculating about who they'll end up with or the dramatic moves their team might make on draft day. In a league built around the idea of parity, the draft gives hope to previously hopeless organizations.
There's one important group of people who might not love the draft as much as they should: the players. On one hand, they are happy to enter the NFL. More than 250 prospects had their childhood dreams come true in the 2021 class, and that has to be a great feeling. That's always going to be a special moment.
In terms of agency, though, players entering the NFL join the league at a major disadvantage. The draft doesn't allow them to choose where they're selected, which can drastically impact their future careers. Quarterback Josh Rosen comes to mind as the most extreme example of what can go wrong if a prospect lands in the worst possible spot for his career, but they have to make smaller sacrifices.
Guys who have spent their whole life in warm weather might suddenly end up being forced to play in frigid conditions. Those who excelled in one scheme in college might have to play in a totally different scheme at the professional level which doesn't use their strengths. Maybe a prospect gets drafted behind Aaron Donald or Russell Wilson and doesn't end up getting the reps he needs over his first few seasons. Some guys are good enough to succeed regardless of where they end up, but they're the exceptions, not the rules.
More recently, players entering the league have had to deal with another hindrance: they're making a fraction of their actual value on the open market. After players at the top of the draft began to enter the league as some of the league's highest-paid players at their positions, the NFL course-corrected by agreeing a rookie scale with the NFLPA as part of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The scale predetermines how much players will be paid in each draft slot. While it has eliminated rookie holdouts, some of the country's most promising prospects end up making a fraction of their true value.
Take quarterbacks at the top of the class. In 2009, No. 1 overall pick Matthew Stafford signed a six-year, $72 million deal with the Lions, which guaranteed the Georgia star $41.7 million at signing. If you adjust that deal for inflation in terms of the 2020 cap, his deal would look like a six-year, $111.5 million deal with $64.5 million guaranteed at signing.
Contrast that to the top of the actual 2020 draft. Joe Burrow signed a four-year, $36.1 million deal with the Bengals, all of which was fully guaranteed, plus a fifth-year option. Everyone naturally hopes Burrow will recover in full from his serious knee injury and make significant money for years to come, but if he's not the same quarterback that we saw at LSU, the difference in what Burrow would have made under the old CBA and the current CBA is drastic.
The NFL isn't alone with this model. The economics of baseball are built around the six cost-controlled years each MLB team enjoys for every prospect they bring up to the majors. Three of those years allow the team to pay a player essentially whatever they want over the minimum. The NBA and NHL assign rookies entry-level contracts, which is how Oilers star Connor McDavid won the Hart trophy for MVP in 2017 while making $925,000 (with $2.8 million more in performance bonuses).
We as fans have generally come to accept this as part of American sports, but it's strange examined with any sort of critical eye. Consider European soccer, where the most promising young player on the continent might be 20-year-old Borussia Dortmund striker Erling Haaland. Haaland has already played for three other clubs and proved himself to be a devastating finisher. He reportedly makes €6 million per year at Dortmund, and when he makes his inevitable move to one of Europe's superpowers, he's reportedly asking for a raise to €35 million per season.
If we applied the American draft model to Haaland, it wouldn't be pretty. The Norwegian star would be a year away from even being allowed to play professional sports. When he did, despite impressing at every level up to this point, he would be forced to make a fraction of his actual value for at least three seasons. There's a universe in which Haaland is the first overall pick in the European Super League by Arsenal. Thankfully for Haaland, it's not this one.
Let's consider the opposite perspective. What if the NFL draft didn't exist? Where would this exciting crop of young players go? What kind of money would they make? How would those decisions change the league in 2021? We'll run through some of the top prospects and see what they might do in a world without the draft, then talk about what it would do to the NFL as a result:
How the process could work with no NFL draft
To make this approximate some semblance of reality, we have to assume that this is the first year without a draft, since there would be dramatic long-term effects on the NFL if the league hadn't had one up to this point. We'll assume that everyone who was eligible for the draft class of 2021 will hit the market simultaneously, and teams will be allowed to sign whomever they want. I'll also assume that these rookies become free agents simultaneously with the league's veteran free agents, which might rewrite some of what we saw this past offseason.
Right now, each NFL team is assigned a certain amount of cap space to sign their draft picks, what is known as a draft pool. Since they have the first overall pick and an additional first-round selection from the Rams in the real world, the Jaguars have the largest draft pool, somewhere around $16 million. The Seahawks only had three draft picks all weekend, leaving them with the smallest draft pool, falling closer to $2.6 million. In all, teams are assigned an average of about $9.3 million to sign their picks.
We know that picks are more valuable than their listed price tags, in part because the league spends accordingly. The Browns memorably ate Brock Osweiler's contract and $16 million for what they expected to be something in line with a late second-round pick. (The pick instead fell earlier than expected and became Nick Chubb.) The Dolphins ate $5 million of Ryan Tannehill's deal when they traded him to the Titans to pick up what amounted to a fifth-round selection after accounting for the value of the various draft picks involved.
To account for the draft disappearing and try to give the league's worst teams some semblance of an advantage, let's double the draft pools for each team. The Jaguars get $16 million more added to their cap to sign players, while the Seahawks add an additional $2.6 million. Since teams don't need to abide by the rookie scale, though, these new deals can get creative. We'll begin with one such deal for the closest equivalent to Haaland ...
Trevor Lawrence, QB
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $36.8 million from the Jaguars (No. 1)
Contract if there was no draft: Five years, $150 million from the Saints
Lawrence has been projected as a top pick since emerging as a freshman superstar for Clemson in 2018. The 6-foot-6 passer might plausibly have been the No. 1 overall selection for the Bengals in 2020 if he had been eligible to come out of school, but since those rules didn't apply, he enters professional football here in 2021.
Would he still sign with the Jaguars? Maybe. The Jags have new coach Urban Meyer and an experienced coaching staff. In terms of the talent surrounding Lawrence, Jacksonville's roster comes in as about average for an incoming rookie quarterback. The Jags have a solid line, especially at center with Brandon Linder, which would give Lawrence an advantage on what Burrow saw with the Bengals last season. DJ Chark, Laviska Shenault and Marvin Jones are an interesting top three at receiver, but since the draft doesn't exist, he doesn't have Travis Etienne at running back (yet). If Lawrence could choose his destination, would Jacksonville give him the best chance of succeeding? Probably not.
If you were a young quarterback hoping to make it to the Hall of Fame, where would you want to end up in 2021? There's an obvious landing spot. The Saints have an excellent line, a pair of superstar weapons in Alvin Kamara and Michael Thomas and a brilliant offensive mind leading the way in Sean Payton. Most teams in this situation already have a standout quarterback at the helm, but with Drew Brees retiring, the Saints suddenly have an open spot at the most important position on the roster.
What they don't have is much cap space, but they could get creative without a rookie scale. Lawrence could sign a five-year deal with a significant signing bonus in 2021 and a roster bonus due in 2022. New Orleans could then restructure the deal after one season by converting the roster bonus to an option bonus while adding a voidable year to help create short-term cap space. General manager Mickey Loomis & Co. probably would have had to go without franchising starting safety Marcus Williams, but they also would have been able to save money on re-signing Jameis Winston, who would no longer have a role on the roster.
How much would Lawrence get on that five-year deal? I asked a handful of people around the NFL what they thought he could get as a free agent and got a wide range of answers. Some thought he should take the shortest possible deal to get to free agency; others thought he should take the biggest possible deal up front. The low end was an average annual salary of $15 million, which was a bit of an outlier. The majority of responses had Lawrence well ahead of Stafford's cap-adjusted average salary, which was $18.3 million per season. Given that Lawrence is regarded as a better prospect than Stafford coming out of school, that shouldn't be a surprise. One AFC coach suggested that Lawrence is better than Dak Prescott and should get $40 million per season as a result, which was a surprise.
The average came in just over $29 million per year, and I'll bump up that number to $30 million to keep things round. The Saints could plausibly do a five-year, $150 million deal while guaranteeing him $92 million with a $35 million signing bonus, a $30 million option bonus and $27 million across his first three base salaries. The deal would look like this:
Lawrence represents the high end of possible first overall picks given his pedigree and positional scarcity. There also aren't going to be many times that a Super Bowl contender and offensive powerhouse would need a quarterback to step in and take over. In these unique times, though, Lawrence would be a perfect fit for the Saints.
Justin Fields, QB
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $18.8 million from the Bears (No. 11)
Contract if there was no draft: Five years, $100 million from the Jaguars
If the Jaguars weren't assigned the ability to draft Lawrence after finishing as the worst team in football, they would have to step in the market and try to grab one of the other quarterbacks projected to become starters at the NFL level. (Remember, we can't say first-round pick anymore.)
While Meyer didn't cross paths with Fields at Ohio State, it's easy to link the two with Ryan Day, who took over for Meyer as the Ohio State coach after the 2018 season. Day also recruited Fields to Columbus after the latter's brief season at Georgia. My instinct is that if the Jags didn't have Lawrence fall into their laps with the first overall pick, their next step would have been toward Fields.
Naturally, Fields wouldn't come as cheap as he will for the Bears, who traded up in real life to grab the 22-year-old. The Jags gave Nick Foles a four-year, $88 million deal two years ago despite the fact that Foles was older, injury-prone and only had brief stretches of success during a dramatic professional career. That was a different regime, but with actual competition for Fields, it's hard to believe he would be settling for much less than Foles. Here, Fields would be looking at a five-year deal with something in the range of $50 million in guarantees at signing.
Trey Lance, QB
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $34.1 million from the 49ers (No. 3)
Contract if there was no draft: Six years, $130 million from the 49ers
In this universe, the 49ers don't have to give up all that draft capital to move up from No. 12 to No. 3 to get Lance. Here, they just need to go out and appeal to Lance as the best possible landing spot for his pro future. Lance might have been able to go out and get more in terms of an average annual salary from another team, but just as was the case for Lawrence in New Orleans, the 49ers can pitch him on working with Kyle Shanahan amid a bevy of possible options in San Francisco.
Of course, this would also change some of the other moves the 49ers have made this offseason. They could get creative to bring down Lance's 2021 price tag, but I don't think they could realistically keep Lance and Jimmy Garoppolo on the roster for long. They probably would have needed to look toward a cheaper veteran option to hold down the fort while Lance developed; is it possible they could have brought Alex Smith back home on a one-year deal?
Zach Wilson, QB
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $35.2 million from the Jets (No. 2)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $60 million from the Broncos
Sam Darnold's disastrous three-year run with the Jets has to be a warning sign to quarterbacks. Darnold didn't have any choice about ending up in New York with little help up front or at receiver -- and the regime that initially drafted him is no longer around -- but the Jets still didn't have much beyond offensive tackle Mekhi Becton heading into this offseason. Even if you want to give them credit for adding Corey Davis, Keelan Cole and Alijah Vera-Tucker in this scenario, this roster would have to be considered among the least impressive in football.
The Broncos, on the other hand, might have one of the NFL's best rosters if you leave quarterback out of the equation. In real life, they weren't well-positioned to get their guy at No. 9 and traded for Teddy Bridgewater. Here, I think they can make their move and woo Wilson. They have one of the deepest receiving corps in all of football, and while they lost a key contributor when tackle Ja'Wuan James tore his Achilles earlier this month, their line suddenly looks to be on the way up.
For Wilson, this deal would do more than put him among better company. As a BYU product who grew up in Utah, this would keep him closer to home. By virtue of being a shorter deal, it would also give the 21-year-old a chance to cash in quicker than his brethren. The Broncos would probably have to guarantee most of this deal, and Wilson would be able to approach free agency after three seasons, forcing them to either franchise him or extend him if he impresses. The Jets would probably be stuck with Darnold for another season.
Mac Jones, QB
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $15.6 million from the Patriots (No. 15)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $50 million from the Patriots
Finally, the last quarterback of these five stays in the same place. Jones realistically needs to prove that he's a franchise quarterback after just one impressive season surrounded by great talent at Alabama. The Patriots are a natural landing spot for the 22-year-old, but he's another player who would benefit from a shorter deal.
If Jones delivers on expectations, the Pats would happily hand him a new deal at the end of this one. Of course, by being able to negotiate with other teams, he would still make a lot more money as part of this deal than he will with the slotted draft.
Penei Sewell, OT
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $24.1 million from the Lions (No. 7)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $45 million from the Chiefs
The rich get richer. In the real world, the Chiefs addressed their left tackle problem by trading draft picks to the Ravens and acquiring Orlando Brown, who is one year away from getting a massive extension. Here, they instead use the leverage of playing for Patrick Mahomes to attract the draft's most promising left tackle prospect.
Sewell would step in on the blind side for the departed Eric Fisher, and while the Chiefs would be trusting Mahomes to a player with no NFL experience, Sewell enters the league as a widely heralded tackle prospect. Can't be worse than what they had in the Super Bowl. The Lions would be forced to look elsewhere for their kneecap-biters.
Kyle Pitts, TE
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $32.9 million from the Falcons (No. 4)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $42 million from the Jaguars
The Jags don't land Lawrence in this scenario, but they do use their added cap space to get Fields a superstar target. The Florida product doesn't need to leave the state here, and while the Jaguars are set at wide receiver, Pitts would slot in as a difference-maker up the seam against linebackers and safeties.
At $14 million per season, Pitts would become the third-highest paid tight end in the league behind Travis Kelce and George Kittle. On a three-year deal, he would also be able to head toward franchise tags and free agency two years before that cycle would typically start on a normal first-year deal. The Falcons would be able to use their added cap space to instead address the defensive side of the ball in bulk.
Ja'Marr Chase, WR
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $30.9 million from the Bengals (No. 5)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $48 million from the Bengals
As one of the most exciting wide receiver prospects of the past decade, Chase would be able to approach some of the largest contracts at his position before ever stepping onto the field. The Bengals have paid a premium to add talent in recent years, and the chance to reunite Chase with Burrow would still be too tantalizing to avoid.
The former LSU star would go from averaging less than $8 million per season on a four-year deal to taking home more than double that on a three-year pact. It might seem like a lot, but if the Bengals aren't willing to make this deal, I suspect other teams would be willing to pay a premium to sign Chase.
Jaylen Waddle, WR
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $27.1 million from the Dolphins (No. 6)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $42 million from the Dolphins
Likewise, while I don't think Waddle would change teams, he would pick up a meaningful raise by being able to talk to teams on the open market. The Dolphins wanted to add a significant long-term weapon for Tua Tagovailoa this offseason, and while it would only be a three-year deal, Waddle would still be in position to grow with his college starter over Tagovailoa's rookie deal.
Najee Harris, RB
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $13.1 million from the Steelers (No. 24)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $18 million from the Steelers
The free market helps solve one of the many problems the league has with valuing running backs. Now, most running backs are typically undervalued on their rookie deals, then overvalued when they sign extensions. There's also a growing problem with backs who hit their fifth-year option, like Saquon Barkley; as Jason Fitzgerald noted, Barkley's fifth-year option will actually amount to a pay cut at $7.2 million. Most backs won't be taken as high as Barkley, but the fifth-year option amounts to yet another season in which players won't be able to approach market value, further reducing their leverage.
The free market approach would return running backs some of their leverage and establish a middle class, where the opportunity to get a player with fresh legs would command more of a premium. Harris' three-year deal would come in at $6 million per season. I suspect that he might be able to get slightly more if he was just looking for the maximum possible deal, but this contract would also come with a no-franchise tag, allowing him to hit true free agency again after three seasons if he impresses in Pittsburgh. The Steelers would probably need to attach a couple of voidable years to get this deal to work on their cap.
Teven Jenkins, OT
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $8.4 million from the Bears (No. 39)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $18 million from the Bears
Let's look at a second-round pick to illustrate how the free market would help guys who aren't taken at the top of the board. The Bears traded up to grab Jenkins in the second round with the 39th pick, sending third and sixth-round picks in the process. Chicago clearly valued him as worth something more than the 39th pick -- the Johnson chart has this as closer to the 34th selection -- but it gets to pay Jenkins at his draft slot as opposed to a spot more in line with the capital used to acquire him. The Bears then cut Charles Leno to presumably install Jenkins as one of their starting tackles, pushing him into one of the most valuable roles on the roster.
Jenkins is unproven on the left side, so the Bears aren't going to pay him like a starting left tackle, but even veteran swing tackles get more than the $2.1 million per season Jenkins is set to receive from his draft slot. Second-round picks are far more valuable than their contracts, and that would be borne out by their deals on the open market.
John Bates, TE
Real-life contract (projected): Four years, $4.2 million from Washington (No. 124)
Contract if there was no draft: Three years, $3.3 million from Washington
I'll finish up by looking at a player chosen in the middle of the fourth round, essentially the absolute middle of the draft. Bates' contract wouldn't be all that much different from what players currently get with their draft slots. The deal would be a year shorter, with Bates hoping that he breaks out and gets to free agency earlier than he would in a typical slotted contract, but the average annual salary is about the same.
Some players would be able to command a small premium over their slot, but this process would likely turn the fifth round and everything onward into a super-sized version of the undrafted free agent scrum. The guys who would otherwise be drafted would lose some semblance of their guarantees, but it might be a positive in the long run, since those prospects would also have more of a say in where they end up and optimize their chances of succeeding.
Would the league be better?
The move to a free-agent model for rookies would totally change the league. As you can see from the top of the draft, it would become significantly more expensive to go after the best rookies. Some teams would be willing to pay the price, but others might look away from the draft and stick with veterans, especially if they're similarly priced to rookies who would otherwise be going late in the first round or throughout the second round of a typical draft.
The rookie scale was ratified, in part, because some teams felt like picks at the top of the draft weren't valuable as they delivered players such as JaMarcus Russell and Cadillac Williams. There will always be players who disappoint at the pro level, and those busts were more damaging when guys at the top of the draft cost more. Even when you factor in the possibility of failure, though, the rookie scale pays players a fraction of what they're worth. This model would also allow teams to make bets on younger players when they feel it's appropriate without having to be locked into a pick at a high price.
One of the other reasons the NFLPA was willing to approve a rookie scale, of course, was because it steered a larger piece of the pie toward the veterans who made up the union. Even if the league added more money under the cap to account for the increased cost of signing these rookies, we would see veteran salaries drop in the process. The players at the absolute top of their respective positions -- such as Patrick Mahomes and Julio Jones -- would be just fine, but the already-slim middle class of veterans would get further wiped out.
Some of the elements that make the NFL so fascinating would go away. The draft has become must-watch television over the past three decades, and while the league would still need to scout and evaluate talent coming out of college football, we wouldn't get that three-day stretch in which every team has to show their work on a national stage. Organizations wouldn't be allowed to trade draft picks or trade for draft picks, since they no longer exist.
It would be tougher to rebuild an organization from the bottom up. The quickest way bad teams turn themselves around is by landing on the right guy at quarterback, and their best path to getting that quarterback is by drafting them with a selection in the top five. Giving the best college players in the nation the choice of playing wherever they want would complicate things. Some would just take the largest offer available, which is reasonable enough. Others might want to play for a winner or in an already-established scheme, which would cost the worst teams their shot at the best talent. Dynasties would be more likely to get broken apart by cap constraints as opposed to the product of picking in the bottom quarter of the draft.
We would also probably see teams in more desirable locations pick up more players. The Dolphins, Buccaneers and Jaguars would likely be able to convince more of the players who were born and raised in Florida to stay in a state with warm weather and no income tax. The same would be true for the Texans and Cowboys in Texas. We've seen the Packers, Vikings and Bills recruit free agents when things are going well for their respective organizations, but getting players to move to cold-weather destinations and/or states with high income taxes might be more challenging under this system.
All of this goes against the biggest element arguing in favor of a free market for rookies: They deserve the money. There's no reason why players should be arbitrarily selected by one team and be forced into playing for a fraction of their true market value over what might be the majority of their professional careers. Take a look at how NFL franchise values have grown over the past decade; there should be plenty of money to go around.
As I say that, I know it's a virtual impossibility. The NFL loves money, and pushing parity has helped make the league one of the most successful enterprises in the sporting world. The draft is an essential part of the league calendar these days, and the hope it provides to the league's worst teams helps perpetuate that parity. No fan wants to root for a team without an obvious path toward improving.
At the same time, though, this exercise reinforced just how much the league takes advantage of players while they're on their rookie deals. Lawrence could make $100 million more over the next four years than he'll make with the Jaguars if he only had the opportunity, and he's one of the lucky ones. Midround picks are expected to play meaningful roles, sacrifice their bodies and hope that they end up hitting the jackpot on their next contracts. If they get drafted by the wrong team, stuck with the wrong coach or end up behind the wrong player, those guys might never get their chance to prove what they can do. The next CBA negotiations are years away, but when they happen, the rookie scale needs to be adjusted to pay the players entering the NFL what they deserve.