After a moderate 2023 free agency period, the Detroit Lions did not receive any compensatory picks in 2024.
For the second year in a row, the Detroit Lions will not receive any compensatory draft picks for the upcoming NFL Draft .
The NFL constantly works toward league balance and it takes several opportunities to level the playing field for its organizations. With unrestricted free agents able to leave their teams during the offseason, it can create a situation where a team loses more assets than it gains. To balance that out, the NFL introduced compensatory draft picks as a way to reward teams with additional draft picks in the following offseason to make up the difference.
The exact formula for how picks are assigned is a league secret, but OverTheCap ’s Nick Korte created a system that is incredibly accurate in predicting how the compensatory picks are assigned. If you’re interested in the details behind the projection, you can read his full methodology for assigning compensatory picks or check out our cliff notes version from the 2022 offseason .
To see why the Lions did not receive any picks, we need to look back at Detroit’s 2023 free agency period, with a little help from OverTheCap 2024 projections :
While OTC’s chart makes it appear that picks are assigned and offset on a one-to-one basis, that is done purely for ease of viewing. It’s important to note that the compensatory formula considers the totality of a team’s free agency period when making its final decisions.
In OTC’s chart, you can see that it is projecting that the Lions had four unrestricted free agents lost that would have potentially returned the value of four late-round draft picks. Unfortunately, Detroit also added five players with values that offset those potential returns. That means, the Lions had more gains than losses in 2023, and therefore the NFL believes they did not need any additional compensation in 2024.
Additionally, because the league’s goal for every team is to get better in the offseason, there is no penalty for improving their roster. This means that the Lions do not lose any draft picks even though they had more gains in 2023.
With no compensatory picks added, here are the draft picks the Lions currently hold in the 2024 NFL Draft:
- Round 1: No. 29
- Round 2: No. 61
- Round 3: No. 73 (via Minnesota for T.J. Hockenson)
- Round 3: No. 92
- Round 5: No. 163
- Round 6: No. 204
- Round 7: No. 249
Note: The Lions do not have a pick in the fourth round as part of the trade that sent Hockenson to the Vikings and returned the Lions a third-round pick in this year’s draft.