Jimmy Johnson is a football legend. He had great success as the head coach at the University of Miami and as the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. But his biggest impact on the game may have been his creation of the NFL Draft Trade Value Chart.

Johnson’s draft trade chart literally revolutionized how NFL teams approached the draft and how they made trades. His chart remained very popular for 15+ years.

Johnson’s chart has since lost some popularity, but its residual impact remains. Several teams have adopted more sophisticated charts that better approximate the value of draft picks, but Johnson was the first to numerically value picks in a systematic objective fashion.

 

Crazy History of the NFL Draft

The NFL draft was instituted in 1936. Throughout the early decades, teams didn’t value draft picks much because draftees often opted to purse other careers.

In fact, only 24 of the 81 players chosen in the very first NFL draft opted to play in the NFL, while the other 57 guys chose other careers, including the #1 overall pick Jay Berwanger who pursued a career as a rubber salesman rather than play pro football—apparently selling rubber was more lucrative than playing running back in the NFL.

As pro football gained momentum, and profitability, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the draft became more important. But even then, most teams still didn’t value draft picks beyond the first two dozen selections or so.

In the pre-1980s era, NFL drafting was far more inconsistent than what we see today (almost hard to imagine because it still feels pretty dang inconsistent). Late round players selected from the 1930s through the 1970s were just as likely to become productive NFL players as guys drafted in the early rounds.

There were certainly a handful of obvious elite players each year, but other than that the draft was largely considered a crap shoot by most NFL executives. Therefore, draft picks weren’t valued. But the value of draft picks began to change drastically in the early 1980s.

 

Draft Value Changes, Big Time

As the NFL increased profits, NFL teams began to invest more resources into scouting and the consistency of drafting began to shift for the better. Also, the first iteration of the NFL combine began in 1982.

NFL executives began to see the draft as a viable way to build a championship team, so draft picks were now beginning to be seen as more valuable than in previous eras.

But through the 1980s, there was no uniformed way of evaluating or determining the value of draft picks for potential trades. That changed with Jimmy Johnson.

 

The Advent and Decline of Johnson’s Chart

Jimmy Johnson introduced the trade chart in the late 1980s. The chart assigned a point value to every pick. Johnson’s chart was simple and seemed less subjective than other methods of valuing picks.

Johnson made efforts to convince other teams to adopt his chart. And, apparently, he was very persuasive. Some teams wholeheartedly embraced his chart. Other teams merely consulted it as one of several tools that they used. But every team utilized it to some extent.

From the early 1990s into the 2000s, Johnson’s chart informed nearly every draft day trade. But then, between 2004 and 2008, Johnson’s chart began to lose popularity, for several reasons.

 

Reason #1: Rookie contracts.

When Johnson’s chart was developed, NFL rookies were the lowest paid players on the team. Acquiring top-tier talent in the draft was very appealing. Teams were willing to give up draft capital to move up.

However, as rookie contracts shifted, acquiring the top-tier talent in the draft became too expensive. Teams didn’t want to give up draft capital and then shell out big money to an unknown player. Ultimately, that was the primary reason some teams abandoned the trade chart and began to devalue the picks toward the top of the draft.

With the new collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) of 2011, the rookie cap and rookie wage scale were introduced, which significantly curbed that rookie contract problem. This helped bring up the value of top draft picks and helped bring back some sense of uniformity as to how the top draft picks were viewed across the league.

 

Reasons #2: Positional values.

Some positions have gone up in value over the last 30+ seasons (e.g., quarterbacks and wide receivers), while some other positions have gone down in the way they are valued (e.g., running backs and linebackers). Furthermore, and maybe more importantly, the disparity between positions was minimal in the early 1990s. But the disparity today is much greater.

A good quarterback is worth far more than a good running back. The value of a good cornerback is much higher than a good linebacker. Johnson’s trade chart did not account for this disparity because, when Johnson created it, this disparity didn’t exist.

If there’s a draft class that is deeper at quarterback or wide receiver, some teams value the picks differently than if the draft class is weaker at quarterback or wide receiver. Several NFL teams reject the idea that a particular pick in the first few rounds is valued similarly from year to year.

 

Reason #3: The 5th year option.

Every player drafted in the first round has a fifth-year option clause in their contract. First round selections have a standard four-year contract with the added provision which allows their NFL team to keep the player for a fifth year. This was negotiated between the NFL and the NFLPA as part of the 2011 CBA.

This is tremendously valuable to teams. Therefore, some teams believe that the gap in value between first round picks and second round picks is much greater than what is reflected in Johnson’s trade chart.

 

Reason #4: Specific offensive and defensive schemes.

Schemes in the NFL in the pre-1980s era were quite simple. But things have changed. Schemes are much more complex. And now the skills needed for specific schemes have become much more particular.

Teams are looking for particular types of players, with specific types of skill sets. But if those specific types of players don’t exist in a particular draft class, then some teams have a tendency to devalue the picks in that class. Or, if a particular draft class has just a few top-tier players with those specific coveted skill sets, then some teams will overvalue the picks toward the top of the draft. Johnson’s trade chart did not account for this sort of scenario.

Similar to the positional values, several NFL teams reject the idea that a particular pick in the first round should have the same value from year to year, because some draft classes are going to be more valuable to them.

 

New Trade Charts Developed: It was the Wild West

By 2006, there were several teams with trade charts that were drastically different than what most of the rest of the league was using, and that made trades hard. In a 2019 interview, Bill Belichick said you’d have teams arguing, “My chart says this. Your chart says that!” Teams would try to negotiate a trade but, according to Belichick, sometimes they wouldn’t be in the “same ballpark because they’re looking at a different chart.”

NFL teams have not made their charts public, but writer Rich Hill tracked every draft pick trade from 2012 to 2017 and used those trades to craft a new trade chart that seemed to show how some teams were valuing draft picks. Hill’s work got a lot of attention from various members of the NFL media.

Five years earlier, analyst Chase Stuart had done similar work and developed a new trade chart, but he received much less notoriety than what Hill received.

During that same time period, it appeared that a few teams were using the Career Approximate Value Over Average (CAVOA) chart developed by Harvard Sports Analysis Collective.

Some NFL teams seemed to be using tweaked versions of Johnson’s original chart. Other teams seemed to have created totally different charts.

Some teams used their same standard chart from year to year, while other teams elected to use charts that seemingly varied from year to year, depending upon how they rated the quality of that particular year’s draft.

It was like the wild, wild west of trade charts.

 

Back to Uniformity

From 2015 to 2019, the various charts across the league seemed to evolve and many of them came closer together over time. While NFL teams still have different charts that they use, Belichick said that now they’re usually all “within 5 to 10 percent” of each other.

According to one NFL scout that I recently asked, teams tend to be pretty close to each other now days, except in the first round. Belichick said something similar, “The first round is a little bit different” because when a team moves up in the first round they’re targeting a “specific player.” When a team trades out of a spot in the first half of the first round, Belichick says that the value of the picks being traded tend to be much more defined by the “specific situations” of the teams involved.

 

It’s About Players, Not Chart Points

When a team makes a trade that doesn’t line up with the original draft trade chart, pundits and fans shout, “Oh, they got ripped off! They gave up too much.” But that’s not how NFL GMs think about trades. The GMs are seeking to accumulate quality players, and if they can do that, they don’t care what the trade charts say.

Back in 2023, Texans GM Nick Caserio was chided for giving up too much draft capital for the rights to draft edge rusher Will Anderson right after drafting quarterback C.J. Stroud. He responded, “We’ve said from the beginning, [we’re] just trying to put together the best team, collectively as much as possible. I think [these] two players are certainly emblematic of that.”

The NFL scout I talked said, “We’re trying to land great players, not trying to accumulate points on a chart!”