Every year the NFL awards 32 bonus Draft picks based on the results of free agency the previous year. These are called compensatory Draft picks.
For many years the system the league used to award the picks was shrouded in mystery. The great NFL salary cap website Over the Cap eventually reverse engineered the formula based on past results.
Generally speaking, teams gain a compensatory pick if they lose a player in free agency whose contract with a new team meets a certain salary threshold. If the team signs
a free agent from another team, that pick is cancelled out. The round the pick is awarded depends on the player’s salary level with the new team. The higher the salary, the higher the pick. (It’s not quite this simple. Sometimes a single pick is awarded based on the cumulative value of multiple players lost, but we don’t need to go that deep into the weeds.)
Over the Cap has a projection of compensatory picks for the 2026 NFL Draft (which are based on the result of free agency in 2025). They expect the Jets to land a pair of fifth round picks.
One of the fifth round picks is for the team losing Haason Reddick to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The other is for losing Morgan Moses to the New England Patriots.
The Jets acquired Reddick in a 2024 trade with the Philadelphia Eagles. Simply put, the trade was a disaster for the Jets. Reddick sat out the offseason program, training camp, and the first seven regular season games of 2024 as a holdout demanding a new contract. He eventually returned for the final ten games of the season, but appeared checked out for an awful Jets team, recording just a single sack. The Jets’ sent their 2026 third round pick to Philadelphia in the trade. That turned into the 68th pick in this year’s Draft. The compensatory pick for Reddick is projected to be in the mid 170s. It’s a catastrophic value loss considering how little the Jets got from Reddick. At least they are getting something in return, though.
The situation around Moses is a tad more favorable for the Jets. The veteran right tackle was also acquired in a trade in 2024. The Jets sent a fourth round pick and a sixth round pick to Baltimore for Moses and a lower fourth round pick. Moses had a solid season for the Jets. Adding a bonus fifth round pick is a cherry on top of one of the few moves the Jets made near the end of the Joe Douglas era that panned out.
Unfortunately for the Jets, Over the Cap projects that Solomon Thomas was the 33rd ranked free agent in the formula. The league awards only 32 compensatory picks for free agency so the team will narrowly lose out on adding an additional pick at the end of the seventh round. That wouldn’t count for much, but it in essence would have allowed the Jets to select the player the undrafted free agent caliber prospect they valued highest.
Not to upset Jets fans, but Over the Cap’s detailed report suggests that signing Justin Fields a year ago wiped out a fourth round pick the team could have gotten for DJ Reed, while the signing of Brandon Stephens eliminated a possible fifth round pick for Javon Kinlaw.
The Jets earning compensatory picks was mainly a result of how constricted they were by the salary cap in the 2025 offseason. The bill for years of poor salary cap management came due. The Jets figured out to how to add a couple of extra picks through that process.
I wouldn’t anticipate the 2026 offseason resulting in any compensatory picks for the Jets in 2027. The team has more salary cap space than a year ago and holes all over the roster. A team needs to lose more than it gains in free agency to land bonus picks, and the Jets won’t have the luxury of sitting out free agency this year.
