Browns Awarded Four Compensatory Draft Picks – Now Have Total of 13 for 2012 NFL Draft
The Cleveland Browns are certainly great at something – stockpiling draft picks. The team was awarded four compensatory draft picks
on Monday, bringing their total for the 2012 NFL Draft to 13, the most since the team’s expansion year of 1999.
The Browns were awarded two picks in the sixth round (Nos. 204 and 205 overall) and two picks in the seventh round (Nos. 245 and 247 overall) and while that may not sound like a lot, value can be found in the later rounds of the draft. For a team that is going through a heavy rebuilding process, every pick is useful.
In case you were wondering, compensatory picks cannot be traded – the team either uses the pick or loses it. These draft picks are awarded to teams based on a net loss in free agency during the previous year. In other words, it’s unrestricted free agents lost against unrestricted free agents signed.
In 2011, the Browns lost Matt Roth, Chansi Stuckey, Abe Elam, Lawrence Vickers, Jason Trusnik, Eric Wright, and Floyd Womack. They signed Usama Young, Dimitri Patterson, and Brandon Jackson.