Consensus Draft is a reference site about the mechanics of the NFL Draft: how pick order is determined, how picks are priced and traded, how compensatory selections are awarded, how rookie contracts are structured, and what the scouting vocabulary means.
It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the National Football League or any of its clubs.
What we do not publish
No prospect rankings. No mock drafts. No player grades or measurements.
That is a deliberate editorial line rather than a limitation. Draft forecasting is enormously well covered, it is largely opinion, and it is worthless three weeks after the event. The rules do not expire. A page explaining how compensatory picks are calculated is as useful in October as it is in April, and it does not require us to pretend to scouting expertise we would have to invent.
It also means there is nothing on this site that could be mistaken for information about a specific named player. If you want rankings, there are hundreds of places to get them; this is the place that explains the machinery those rankings are feeding into.
Editorial stance
Rules are stated plainly where they are public. Where something is genuinely unknown — the compensatory pick formula is the obvious case — we say it is unknown rather than paraphrasing a model as though it were the rule.
Research findings are attributed and dated, with their caveats attached. The Massey–Thaler surplus-value work on the trade value chart is a good example: it is frequently cited without mentioning that the contract data predates the rookie wage scale, which materially changes what the conclusion means today.
Numbers we are not sure of do not get published. There is no value in a chart that is 90% right.
Corrections
Rules change, and reference sites rot quietly. If you find something wrong — a rule that has been amended, a threshold that has moved, a mechanism described loosely — tell us. Corrections are made, and the page notes that a correction was made.
We do not accept sponsored content, paid links or guest posts.