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On Friday, the NFL announced all of the compensatory picks for the 2018 NFL Draft. Compensatory picks are given to teams that lost more assets than they gained in the previous year’s free agency period. The more valuable the free agent lost, the higher the pick. Although the league announced 32 compensatory picks, the Detroit Lions received none.
However, that was expected. Though the Lions lost a few big names to free agency last year—Larry Warford, Riley Reiff, Rafael Bush and Andre Roberts, among others—they were active enough in signing other free agents to compensate for the losses. Particularly, the additions of Rick Wagner, T.J. Lang and Akeem Spence pretty much guaranteed that the Lions weren’t going to be getting any extra compensation from the league this year.
That leaves the Lions with either five or six draft picks for the 2018 NFL Draft. The Lions do not have a sixth-round pick after sending to the the Los Angeles Rams for offensive tackle Greg Robinson. They may also not have their seventh-round pick, after trading for cornerback Johnthan Banks in 2016. However, that was a conditional trade, and it’s unclear if Banks—who only played in two games for the Lions before getting waived—met said conditions.
This is the second straight year the Lions have gone without any compensatory picks. Back in 2016, the Lions were awarded two (a third rounder and a sixth rounder) after the losses of Ndamukong Suh and Nick Fairley in the 2015 offseason. They ended up using those picks on Graham Glasgow and Jimmy Landes.