NFL Announces Draft Changes for Dolphins and Saints

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Just over a month before the NFL draft in Green Bay, the league has tweaked the draft order slightly.
The New Orleans Saints have gained a seventh-round draft pick and the Miami Dolphins have lost one after an adjustment to the NFL's compensatory pick calculations, according to a Friday afternoon report from Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.
The Dolphins had been set to make two compensatory picks in the seventh round of the draft, while the Saints had not initially been awarded any compensatory draft picks.
In addition to those moves, the Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Chargers both moved back one spot in the draft order. They had been slated to pick 254th and 255th, respectively.
The NFL Management Council has informed clubs of a recalculation to the 2025 compensatory picks, awarding the #Saints a seventh-round selection, removing a seventh from the #Dolphins and sliding back the #Browns and #Chargers sevenths by one pick.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) March 14, 2025
Compensatory picks are awarded to NFL teams to compensate for free agents lost the previous year; the exact formula for their distribution is not public information.
The back end of the NFL draft has received increased interest in recent years following the wild success of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who contended for an MVP award in 2023 after being chosen last in the 2022 draft.
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Patrick Andres is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He joined SI in December 2022, having worked for The Blade, Athlon Sports, Fear the Sword and Diamond Digest. Andres has covered everything from zero-attendance Big Ten basketball to a seven-overtime college football game. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a double major in history .