Changes in Draft Order
At the 2009 annual owners meeting, NFL owners unanimously approved changes to the order for assigning draft picks, starting with the 2010 draft.
The new format took into account the seeding of playoff teams. The two major changes from previous years were:
- Teams that make the playoffs pick after teams that do not.
- Teams that advance further in the playoffs pick later. In 2008, the Chargers, who went 8–8 in the regular season, defeated the 12–4 Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Wild Card game, but, nevertheless, the Chargers picked 16th while the Colts were assigned the 27th overall pick according to the rules then in effect, which prioritized regular season record for all teams except those in the Super Bowl.
The new order assigns picks for each round as indicated in the table below. With the exception of the changes noted above, the order will generally follow that used in previous years (i.e., within a given status, teams with worse regular-season records will pick earlier in the first round, and picks will cycle from round to round among teams that are tied).
Three coin tosses were necessary to establish the final selection order: Jacksonville, Tennessee, and Atlanta won their flips over Denver, Carolina, and Houston, respectively.
| Status | Draft picks |
|---|---|
| Non-playoff teams | 1–20 |
| Eliminated in Wild Card round | 21–24 |
| Eliminated in Divisional round | 25–28 |
| Eliminated in Conference Championships | 29–30 |
| Super Bowl losing team | 31 |
| Super Bowl champion | 32 |
Read more about this topic: 2010 NFL Draft
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