Compensatory picks in the National Football League are awarded based on a formula.
Nobody knows exactly what that formula is, but there are some people in the media and content creation space that have a really good handle on it. Nick Korte from “Over The Cap” is widely considered one of the best in the business when it comes to understanding the nuances that go into NFL teams being awarded compensatory picks and specifically, where they’ll be located in the draft.
The Buffalo Bills received a fourth-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft due to the net loss of compensatory free agents (compensatory free agents being unrestricted free agents whose contracts expired naturally with their original team and signed with a new team for over a certain dollar threshold). Guard (now center) Connor McGovern and wide receiver Deonte Harty were compensatory free agents coming onto the team, while linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, running back Devin Singletary, and quarterback Case Keenum were compensatory free agents leaving the team. Three out and two in leaves a net of negative one, making the Bills eligible for a compensatory pick. The net of negative one in this case was the former starting linebacker Tremaine Edmunds, who signed a four-year contract with the Chicago Bears with an average net annual value of $18 million. It was widely predicted that this loss would garner the Bills a third-round pick in the 2024 NFL Draft — to the point where Nick Korte openly opined that the NFL Management Council (the body in charge of assigning compensatory picks) may have made a mistake in the 3rd/4th round cutoff for pick allotment:
The Bills weren’t the only team expected to get a third that ended up being a fourth, though. The San Francisco 49ers (for the loss of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey) and the Cincinnati Bengals (for the departure of safety Jessie Bates) were also expected to get third-round picks.
As Nick pointed out, this isn’t the first time the council made an error. In 2015, they announced late in March, after free agency had started, that a “database error” had incorrectly awarded the Denver Broncos, Carolina Panthers, and Pittsburgh Steelers their compensatory picks. The Broncos’ selection ended up dropping down a round, while the Steelers and Panthers picks ended up jumping up one round.
Bills general manager Brandon Beane himself had stated that the team expected to receive a third-round pick in the compensatory system and that he was making plans around that in the 2023 run of free agency to not jeopardize that expected pick.
Whether the governing body of compensatory picks made an error here or not is unknown since the precise formula for awarding the picks isn’t published, but unless there is another mea culpa by the league, the Bills will have to make due with a compensatory pick one round lower than they would have preferred.
One caveat to this formula that was mentioned above is that the formula only applies to free agents whose contract expired naturally and they left as unrestricted free agents. Players a team cuts who sign with another team don’t count as compensatory free-agent losses (so Jordan Poyer, Mitch Morse, Deonte Harty, etc for 2024), and players who have been released by other teams and signed with your team don’t count as compensatory additions (like Mitchell Trubisky signing back with the Bills after being cut by the Steelers).
The Bills hosted former Jacksonville Jaguars and recently released defensive tackle Folorunso “Foley” Fatukasi on a visit. If he signed, it wouldn’t count as a compensatory free-agent loss and would allow the team to potentially get a pick in 2025 awarded based on the loss of a free agent like wide receiver Gabe Davis.
Some of the Bills players with expiring contracts:
- WR Gabe Davis
- DT DaQuan Jones
- DE Leonard Floyd
- DT Tim Settle Jr.
- DT Jordan Phillips
- DT Poona Ford
- LB Tyrel Dodson
- CB Dane Jackson
- DE A.J. Epenesa
- DT Linval Joseph
- DE Shaq Lawson
- QB Kyle Allen
- DB Cam Lewis
- RB Ty Johnson
Of that list, Davis, Jones, Floyd, and Dodson are highly likely to obtain free-agents contracts on the open market with another team that would place them in a status of being a “compensatory free agent” (usually that contract would be in the neighborhood of $2 million or more in AAV). Dane Jackson is a player who, like Levi Wallace before him, may get a compensatory free-agent contract just north of the number needed. A.J. Epenesa’s value is hard to gauge after being a second-round pick and being an effective rotational player with Buffalo. It appears possible he could also fall into the compensatory loss bucket based upon league interest.
That gives the Bills somewhere between four and six compensatory free agents lost if none of them are retained by the team. If they decide to plan their free-agency strategy around the possibility of gaining compensatory picks as Brandon Beane stated they did in 2023, they’ll likely need to target released players — given the holes that are necessary to fill. They may also target players they can sign in the summer (specifically, after May 1) after the compensatory formula is crystallized and calculated. These players, when signed, don’t count as additions for the purposes of the compensatory formula.
Here are some of the recently released NFL players, aside from the aforementioned Fatukasi, who the Bills may want to keep in mind:
- S Rayshawn Jenkins (Jaguars)
- S Quandre Diggs (Seahawks)
- C Mason Cole (Steelers)
- EDGE Emmanuel Ogbah (Dolphins)
- C Brian Allen (Rams)
- S Tracy Walker (Lions)
- OT Chukwuma Okorafor (Steelers)
- S Eddie Jackson (Bears)
- OL Cody Whitehair (Bears)
- EDGE Julian Okwara (Eagles)
- WR Cornell Powell (Chiefs)
- EDGE Shaq Barrett (Buccaneers)
- WR Marquez Valdes-Scantling (Chiefs)
- C Nick Gates (Commanders)
- OT Charles Leno (Commanders)
- OL Mark Glowinski (Giants)
- LB Eric Kendricks (Chargers)
- DT Bryan Mone (Seahawks)
- CB Avonte Maddox (Eagles)
- S Justin Simmons (Broncos)
- DB Patrick Peterson (Steelers)
- WR Allen Robinson (Steelers)
As free agency unfolds and the Bills get a better sense of how many of their own who left and will qualify as compensatory losses in the pick formula, they’ll get an idea of how many true unrestricted free agents they can sign without jeopardizing the pick(s) — and that’s even if it matters to them in this season, as it clearly did for them last season. If they need to plug a hole and they don’t have room to wiggle in the formula, they may need to look toward either the summer or the list above (which will certainly grow much larger in the coming weeks) to field the roster for another playoff run in 2024.
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