Did the New York Jets get surplus value when they traded back from pick 10 to pick 11?

What does the Jimmy Johnson trade value chart say about the Jets’ trade down?

A few weeks back I wrote about how the NFL actually values picks when they trade them and which of the draft value tables was most accurate with data suggesting the Jimmy Johnson table was best.

Then, serendipitously as far as that article was concerned, the New York Jets actually went ahead and traded picks for picks in Thursday’s NFL draft. I also saw some comments questioning whether or not they got adequate value for their pick when they traded it, so I figured it a good question to try to answer. So how did I do that?

To start, the picks traded were as follows:

• New York Jets: received picks 11, 129, and 157
• Minnesota Vikings: received picks 10 and 203

From there, we can go check out the Jimmy Johnson table and sum the values for each side to see if the Jets got more value based on how picks have historically been valued.

• New York Jets: received 1321.6 (1250 + 43 + 28.6) points worth of value
• Minnesota Vikings: received 1310.2 (1300 + 10.2) points worth of value

Overall, that’s a small win for the Jets if we interpret the table literally. However, a better interpretation is probably that that’s an even trade for each side give how similar those values are.

With that, it’s hard to argue that the Jets did not get sufficient value. Asking much more would require the Jets to fleece the other team, which isn’t really a reasonable ask. Perhaps even more importantly is the context that the Jets still got the player they wanted, as they were never thought to be in the quarterback market, which was the position selected by the Vikings. Through that lens, anything they got was found money in a sense, so it’s hard to consider this trade anything but a resounding win for the Jets.