Evaluating NFL trades is always tricky. Doing so when they heavily revolve around players who’ve never played a snap in the league is even tougher.
That’s the concern with rapid reactions what’s annually the league’s busiest trading stretch. Each year, the NFL Draft plays backdrop to a litany of moves that shake up draft boards and reveal teams’ true priorities. While we know which players have looked good in college and which have all the traits to be solid contributors each Sunday, there’s no guarantee that a prospect, no matter how coveted, will pan out.
That makes grading draft day trades a difficult process. Fortunately, we’ve got tools to better help us understand the price each team attaches to these picks. While there’s no 1:1 translation of how these selections are valued, we know the broad strokes. The most famous trade value chart dates back roughly 35 years thanks to then-Dallas Cowboys head coach Jimmy Johnson. That formula’s been tweaked and evolved many times over since then, but using years of data, Pats Pulpit’s Rich Hill was able to divine an approximation of what Bill Belichick’s pick value system looks like.
We’ll use those charts to understand the raw value of these swapped picks alone, but we’ll also factor in team needs and a prospect’s stock as well to come up with a grade that makes sense Thursday night and may well look very stupid three years later. Here are the deals that went down in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft, what Belichick’s guide says about them, and how we think each team did.