Trade analysis: Detroit Lions give up moderate value in first-round swap

The Detroit Lions made an aggressive trade up to draft Alabama CB Terrion Arnold. Let’s break down the value of the trade:

The Detroit Lions traded up five spots in the first round to add Alabama cornerback Terrion Arnold in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft.

Here are the terms of the trade:

Lions get:

• Pick 24 (CB Terrion Arnold)
• 2025 seventh-round pick

Cowboys:

• Pick 29
• 2024 third-round pick (73)

The trade leaves the Lions with just a total of two picks in the top 150: the pick they used on Terrion Arnold and their second-round pick (61 overall).

Did the Lions get good value with their trade? Not exactly, according to several analytical models.

Jason Fitzgerald from Over The Cap—using the “Fitzgerald-Spielberger” chart—shows the trade leaning in the Cowboys’ favor, giving up what accounts to a low fourth-round pick (130th overall):

Per ESPN analytic expert Seth Walder, the trade was even more tipped in the Cowboys’ favor:

The other common trade chart used in analyzing draft trades is the Rich Hill model. Obviously, we don’t know the exact value of the Cowboys’ 2025 seventh-round pick, but here’s how that trade looks excluding the pick in return:

Cowboys get:

• Pick 29 — 209 points
• Pick 73 — 65 points

274 points total

Lions get:

• Pick 24 — 237 points
• 2025 seventh-round pick — about 2 points

So that gives the Cowboys an advantage of 35 points — the equivalent of a high fourth-round pick.

So, overall, the Lions overspent in the trade by about a fourth-round pick. But when you’re trading up in the first round, that is typically about the price of business.

The question is: how will the Lions approach the rest of the draft with so little draft capital in the first few days.