Green Bay Packers Projected to Land 2 Compensatory Picks in 2022 NFL Draft

This past Tuesday may have seemed like just another Tuesday, but in the NFL, any free agent signing that took place after 4 pm eastern would not count towards compensatory picks for the 2022 draft. So with that, Lance Zierlein of NFL.com put out his compensatory projections for the Green Bay Packers along with the rest of the NFL.

However, before we take a look at those projections, what is a compensatory pick, and how is it calculated?

For starters, a player who is cut is not considered a compensatory free agent—their contract must have expired for them to be included. On top of that, not every unrestricted free agent whose contract expired is a compensatory free agent.

According to the Collective Bargaining Agreement via Over the Cap, to qualify, a player must be “ranked within the top 35% of all League players.” So, in addition to having an expiring contract, career performance benchmarks are taken into account as well for them to be considered a compensatory free agent.

Once we know which free agents are compensatory and which are not, it’s as simple as, did the NFL team sign more compensatory free agents than they lost?

If the team did sign more compensatory free agents than they lost, they won’t be awarded any additional draft picks. On the flip side, for every compensatory free agent lost by a team and not replaced, they’ll earn a draft pick.

When it comes to determining the value of the draft pick, that is largely dependent on the value of the contract that the free agent receives from his new team in free agency.

Looking at this year’s draft, the Green Bay Packers had two fourth, two fifth, and two sixth-round selections because they received compensatory picks for losing Bryan Bulaga (4th), Blake Martinez (5th), and Kyler Fackrell (6th) last offseason.

So how does what took place this offseason for the Green Bay Packers impact next year’s draft? Well, Zierlein projects that they will receive two compensatory picks in the 2022 NFL Draft in addition to the selections that they already had.

With Joe Fortunato being the Packers’ only offseason addition who wasn’t already on the roster, they didn’t sign any compensatory free agents. However, they did lose two, with Corey Linsley signing with the Los Angeles Chargers and Jamaal Williams signing with Detroit.

Based on the contracts Linsley and Williams received, Zierlein also projects that Green Bay will receive a fourth-round pick for Linsley and a sixth-round pick for Williams.

These additional draft picks can provide teams with added capital to move up in the draft, just as Green Bay did last week, trading one of their fourth-round picks to trade up for Amari Rodgers. Or, hopefully, that player becomes a long-term contributor, just as Blake Martinez, Josh Sitton, Mike Daniels, and several others have over the years.