The NFL Draft is the single most important offseason event on the NFL calendar and arguably more important than any offseason event in American sports. But for a number of teams that have struggled endlessly with building their teams through the draft, a new rule could be a major boost for them.
According to Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk, the Cleveland Browns are proposing an amendement to the NFL constitution which would allow NFL Draft selections to be traded up to five years in the future. As it stands, the current limit is three years - which is why nobody trades 2030 draft picks now, unlike the NBA.
"Per a source with knowledge of the situation, the Browns have proposed an amendment to Article XVI, Section 16.6 of the NFL Constitution & Bylaws 'to allow draft selections to be traded up to five (5) seasons in the future.' The current limit (which isn’t articulated in the Constitution & Bylaws) is three years," Florio wrote.
News of the proposal has fans largely mocking the Browns, with many declaring that the team would only mess their situation up worse and for longer under such a rule:
"Please God, don't let Andrew Berry and Rebatin' Jimmy Haslam have the ability to mortgage even more if the future to suit their hairbrained schemes," one user remarked.
"All this tells me is they didn’t learn their lesson and would have traded even more for Watson," another wrote.
"In a league where executives and coaches rarely finish their first contract this is the most irresponsible possible thing the league could allow to happen," wrote a third.
"Fantasy football leagues don’t even allow that."
Pros and Cons
One major benefit a change like this would offer is the ability to take risks on trades without sacrificing the short-term future of the team. If an NFL general manager wants to go "all-in" on a player or prospect, they wouldn't have to basically forfeit top prospects the very next year or two and could perhaps stave off the harm for a whole four to five years away. By then, the team might have found the success it was looking for.
Of course, the equally opposite side of this coin is that teams that gamble and lose would now find themselves screwed for up to several extra years. We've seen plenty of teams trade three entire years worth of high NFL draft picks on deals that don't pan out. The end result is a team being essentially spinning its wheels for half a decade or more. Giving them extra chips to gamble away could keep bad teams bad for way longer.
The measure requires three-fourths of the 32 NFL owners (24) to get approved.
Will this measure be passed?