Draft Day Trades: 2025
The latest newsletter from KCSN Sports Data Scientist, Joseph Hefner
One of my favorite parts of the NFL draft is the craziness that is draft day trades. Some teams trade several times, others do not trade at all. Some teams only trade up, others only trade down. Often it is a mix of the two. Sometimes these deals are pretty even, and other times it seems as though one team took the other to the cleaners.
Calculating which team “won” or “lost” a trade is both a very simple and very complicated calculation. Simple, because we have several generally recognized “Trade Charts”. Complicated because these “Trade Charts” can differ significantly from each other, based on their methodology and purpose.
The Jimmy Johnson trade chart is the original, back in the 1990’s, based on what he saw from actual NFL trades at the time. Rich Hill updated it in 2018 using the same general methodology, but using more current trade data instead of trades from the 90’s. The other common charts (Chase Stuart, Fitzgerald-Spielberger aka OTC, PFF, and Ben Baldwin) all use various methodologies that look at how much value the average player drafted with draft pick X provides to a team, and uses that value as the value of the pick.
The Chiefs made four draft day trades. They traded back with the Eagles for pick 32 (OT Josh Simmons), traded up with the Patriots for pick 85 (CB Nohl Williams), traded up with the Steelers for pick 156 (LB Jeffrey Bassa) and traded up with the Patriots again for pick 228 (RB Brashard Smith). Here is every pick the Chiefs gave up, and every pick the Chiefs received back in those trades.
The Chiefs gave up 7 picks in total, and received 5 picks back in those trades. You can see that the Total lines add up the value of all of the picks given or picks received, and then the excess value shows how many points difference those two totals are, and what pick that difference would equal. For example, the Jimmy Johnson chart shows that the 7 picks the Chiefs gave up were worth 768 points, while the picks they received were worth 810. 810 minus 768 equals 42 excess points, which is the value of an extra late fourth round pick.