Martin Manley put up a great analysis of the comparative value of a player by round for the 3 success outcomes (all pro, pro bowl, primary starter). Given the after draft thinking, it's a great read: http://sportsinreview.com/blog/?p=1018 I also did some derivative analysis on it. Looking at pro bowls a player drafted in the 1st round is X times more likely to go to a pro bowl in a given year than the other rounds as follows: Round 2: 2.7 Round 3: 4.7 Round 4: 10.8 Round 5: 8.3 Round 6: 10.4 Round 7: 20.8 If I’m a good team, I use those ratios as my bible to draft and trade picks. If I’m not a good team and I need a bunch of starters across the board, then I try to find many (hopefully rational) trade partners with good teams to take advantage of the different ratios for round 1 vs. other rounds for primary starters, which are: Round 2: 1.4 Round 3: 2.2 Round 4: 2.7 Round 5: 3.9 Round 6: 4.8 Round 7: 5.2 The grid (based off Martin’s data) can be found at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ak9DQaylNFGndFdfTFhFUUYyTnRrd0tLWmh1YlRMUXc&pli=1#gid=0