Draft Position and Potential Trades

I believe that the Texans are now guaranteed:
Pick 18 (Round 1, Pick 18) and
Pick 79 (Round 3, Pick 16)
Overall positions for later rounds will be influenced by compensatory picks, but the Texans should have:
Round 4, Pick 19
Round 5, Pick 18
Round 6, Pick 17
Round 7, Pick 16

People talk about trades all the time (including some totally crazy ones), so just to give an idea, here are some potential "nearly fair" trade scenarios, based on the common draft value chart. Just for purposes of this, I'll assume the current ordering of higher-level poicks, and that New England beats Dallas in the Superbowl.

Our first round pick (900 points) could be traded for:
Dallas: Pick 22 (1st round, from Cleveland) - 780 points, Pick 94 (Round 3, pick 31) - 124 points
Seattle: Pick 23 (1st round) - 760 points, Pick 89 (Round 3, pick 26) - 145 points
Pittsburgh: Pick 24 (1st round) - 740 points, Pick 85 (Round 3, pick 22) - 165 points
San Francisco: Pick 30 (1st round, from Indianapolis) - 620 points, Pick 70 (Round 3, pick 7) - 240 points, 5th round pick (about 35-40 points)
Dallas: Pick 31 (1st round) - 600 points, Pick 62 (Round 2, pick 31) - 284 points

So, we can pick up a very late 2nd (or equivalent) by trading down to the very bottom of the 1st round, or pick up a 3rd by dropping 4-6 slots. We ought to get a 4th for dropping 1-2 slots. Obviously, we'd need to see who was left on the board at 18 before any of these, and these trades might not be open in any case.

If we wanted to trade up, we could package our 1st and 3rd (1095 total points) to trade up about four slots to 14. I really can't imagine the Texans giving up such high-level picks to move up, though.

From the looks of it there are 15 other teams in the NFL with worse records than the Texans. There are also 2 other teams with exactly the same records. Does that mean we will pick 16th one round 17th the next and 18th the last? Can we make our second round pick the 18th pick?

Let's not forget that we traded down with the Saints a few slots while they selected Alex Brown (I think?) and we picked up a third from them for only moving a few slots. Also, the Titans hosed us, so trading out of the first wouldn't be a completely bad idea IMO. I don't think it's worth trading down unless we get a 2nd round pick. Otherwise, I'll sit at 18 and select BPA not named Long or Jackson.

Andrew6 said:

From the looks of it there are 15 other teams in the NFL with worse records than the Texans. There are also 2 other teams with exactly the same records. Does that mean we will pick 16th one round 17th the next and 18th the last? Can we make our second round pick the 18th pick?

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Yes, there are 15 teams with worse records (and these get the first 15 slots). But, there are 3 other 8-8 teams (Arizona, Minnesota, Philadelphia), plus the Texans. These teams will have slots 16-19 in each round. The ordering is based on strength of schedule, and based on this (from info I saw elsewhere), the Texans get 18th in the first round (Philadelphia is 19th). Then, my understanding is that those teams "rotate" positions in following rounds. So, Texans would have the 17th slot in round 2 (traded away), 16th in round 3, 19th in round 4, etc.

keyser said:

Yes, there are 15 teams with worse records (and these get the first 15 slots). But, there are 3 other 8-8 teams (Arizona, Minnesota, Philadelphia), plus the Texans. These teams will have slots 16-19 in each round. The ordering is based on strength of schedule, and based on this (from info I saw elsewhere), the Texans get 18th in the first round (Philadelphia is 19th). Then, my understanding is that those teams "rotate" positions in following rounds. So, Texans would have the 17th slot in round 2 (traded away), 16th in round 3, 19th in round 4, etc.

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Yep. Last year we had 8-7-9-8-7-9-8.