The legendary chart that still governs the NFL draft was an inexact estimate of a 1980s market. Its creator, the Dallas Cowboys, never intended to guide hundreds of draft-day trades for decades to come, but here we are. When the 2022 bonanza begins Thursday in Las Vegas, general managers will answer phones, haggle over picks and reference this outdated rubric.
Its purpose, ever since 1991, has been to quantify the relative value of draft picks. It posits, for example, that No. 1 overall is worth the same as Nos. 3, 35 and 68. As it spread from Jimmy Johnson’s Cowboys across the league, it took on Johnson’s name, and became “the standard that trades are made by,” as Jerry Jones once said.