The Rams and Patriots were two of the top teams in the NFL this season, but they didn’t mortgage the future to build for the present.
In fact, one good measure of how well a team plans for the future is how well it does at getting compensatory picks. And the Rams and Patriots are expected to get the best compensatory pick compensation in the NFL in 2019.
Although the NFL hasn’t yet released the full list of compensatory picks for the 2019 draft, Nick Korte of OverTheCap.com typically projects the picks accurately, and his projections for this year’s draft say that the Rams and Patriots will each get two third-round compensatory picks.
The NFL awards compensatory picks to players who lose free agents and don’t sign other free agents to replace them, and the more expensive the free agents you lose, the better the picks you get. The Patriots two third-round picks will be for losing Nate Solder and Malcolm Butler, while the Rams’ two third-round picks will be for losing Trumaine Johnson and Sammy Watkins.
The other three teams expected to get third-round compensatory picks are Washington (for losing Kirk Cousins), Carolina (for losing Andrew Norwell) and Baltimore (for losing Ryan Jensen).