Should teams trade up in the NFL draft? Lessons from past deals - ESPN

There's nothing quite like instant gratification. During draft weekend, trading up is an NFL organization's path to immediate happiness. Why would a team wait and hope to land the player it wants when it can get him now? Why wait to use picks next year when it can get those players on its roster in a matter of moments? Every fan has seen the way draft rooms celebrate when they make the call to land the player of their dreams. Nobody ever fist-pumps because they landed an extra sixth-round pick on Saturday afternoon.

Just about every bit of research on the draft you'll read suggests trading down and amassing extra picks is the right approach. No team wants 250 seventh-round picks — that's a straw man argument — but there's real value in adding premium picks as franchises build a roster. The early-1990s Cowboys were built on a bedrock of draft picks, many initially acquired by the Herschel Walker deal. The 2000s Patriots built their dynasty by taking advantage of desperate teams and often trading down for extra picks. They also landed a pretty good quarterback with a sixth-round compensatory pick in 2000 by the name of Tom Brady, a reminder that those late-round picks can turn into a valuable player.

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The Chiefs, though, might best exhibit how a modern team can move up and down and make it work. Their Super Bowl window opened when then-general manager John Dorsey moved up in Round 1 of the 2017 draft to take the second quarterback off the board, Patrick Mahomes. A few years later, the Chiefs acquired significant draft capital by trading Tyreek Hill to the Dolphins for five draft picks, some of which were used when they moved up to take star cornerback Trent McDuffie in 2022.

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