Chiefs Insider Josh Looney of KCChiefs.com wrote a story on Monday morning talking about the draft trade value chart, which is essentially a system that assigns a point value to each slot in the draft in order to better facillitate trades between teams. You can check out an example of the value chart at KCChiefs.com.
Josh qualifies the use of the chart by mentioning that there are plenty of flaws that come with it.
Indeed, there are flaws, namely the financial consequences of each pick these days. The chart was created (I think) by the Dallas Cowboys' Jimmy Johnson in the early '90s. (I bet the Minnesota Vikings wished they had used it in the Herschel Walker trade.)
These days, though, it's not that useful. It can provide a basic guideline of how much a pick may be worth -- especially after the first round -- but the money that comes into play with the top picks, which is rising year-by-year, has made it less useful.
Chiefs GM Scott Pioli noted last year around this time that the chart was outdated.
"Conceptually," he said last April, "that was a great idea in the past. In recent years, the trade charts never took into account the cost of picks from a financial standpoint. That was something that was missing."
I think it's useful in the later rounds -- Josh used the example of the Tony Moeaki trade last year as one that matched up -- but it's not for everyone.
Pioli summed it up pretty well last year: "You can look at different models and systems but at the end of the day you have to sit there and think, 'How much do we want that player?'"