It's time to get weird. Every year, ESPN's thoughtful, talented analysts produce a bevy of mock drafts to preview and predict what will happen when the NFL gathers at the end of April. And then, somewhere in the middle, I sneak in with something far more ridiculous and absurd. Most mock drafts these days have a trade or two factored in. My annual mock draft? It has 32 of them.
Today, I'm bringing my annual mock draft consisting entirely of trades to you. It is, to put it nicely, a thought exercise. Each trade occurs in its own universe, so what happened in the trade for the first overall pick doesn't exist in the trades that occur for any of the other 31 selections. I'll also mention scenarios where a player falls unexpectedly or a team wants to move on from a veteran, which helps create a context where a deal would make sense.
Obviously, we don't know whether those things will happen come draft day, but remember that this time a year ago, Shedeur Sanders was expected to go somewhere in the top half of the first round, and I was mostly dismissing the idea of a Micah Parsons trade even as I included one in the piece. In that deal, the Cowboys got two first-round picks in a three-way trade sending Parsons to the Falcons, who shipped off their 2026 first-rounder to help land a much-needed edge rusher. We're counting that one as directionally accurate.
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I've tried to use general manager history and each team's current situation to estimate how teams will approach trading up or down on draft day. Most franchises have their own private trade value chart, but we still see most of them use the Jimmy Johnson chart to help discuss and finalize trades as a lingua franca. And while it's commonly suggested that teams discount future picks by a full round, I haven't really found that to be true in the opening round of the draft for quite a while now. So I have only a mild discount on future picks, which I'm regressing close to the average pick in a typical round outside of extreme scenarios. This doesn't appear to be a year when there's significant interest in moving up, so I'm not projecting teams to pay a massive premium as they jump up in Round 1. I'll note exceptions accordingly.
Picks in this year's draft are notated with the round and overall pick number; the 45th pick in this year's draft -- a second-round selection -- would be listed as "2-45." Future picks are mentioned by round since we don't know exactly where they'll land. And with five teams holding 10 of the 32 first-round picks, well, a handful of organizations show up repeatedly throughout this mock draft. The Falcons, Colts, Packers, Jaguars and Broncos do not have their first-rounders, and none of them makes an appearance.