I recently saw a post where someone was asking if people would prefer Justin Jefferson or five 1sts, five 2nds, and five 3rds. I definitely preferred the picks. However, a common response was that some would rather take the proven stud over five so-called “dart throws”. This is a wrong view of picks. Trading for picks is not a gamble. It’s an acquisition of value.

The Reasoning

The simple fact that so many miss is that picks can be traded. It’s like getting paid in stocks. Sure, it can be a gamble if you hold onto it, but you can also sell it. Furthermore, some of those picks can end up being safe picks like Bijan Robinson.

Picks Help for Rebuilders

A major factor is that picks generally increase in value. Justin Jefferson may be someone who can help your team for a decade. But I doubt his value will ever increase much from where it is now. There is also a risk that his value will decrease, which could hurt rebuilders. Future draft picks are almost guaranteed to increase in value until they are used. Rebuilding is about gaining value over the long run and 15 picks are much more likely to do that than one stud. I’d argue keeping Jefferson in this case is the larger gamble.

Picks Help for Contenders

The case for picks is much more obvious for rebuilders. But you may be surprised to hear this helps for contenders too. In this example, I could possibly use about a third of the value of these picks to trade for someone like Cooper Kupp, who on his own could be a better win-now piece than Justin. I’d then still have the flexibility with the other picks to save for the future or to trade for more win-now pieces. A move some contenders use is they trade for picks and hold them until the trade deadline. If they’re truly a contender, they should be able to make the playoffs without one player like Justin Jefferson. Additionally, having all of these picks allows them to buy players who have proven themselves throughout the season and to avoid players who get injured earlier in the season since picks can’t get injured.

To give you an idea of what you could do with 1sts, here are names being taken after mid-2023-1st round rookies based on ADP:

Jerry Jeudy, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, DJ Moore, Javonte Williams, D’Andre Swift, Kirk Cousins, Dallas Goedert, Terry McLaurin, Joe Mixon, Miles Sanders, Chris Godwin, Geno Smith, Amari Cooper, Cam Akers, Pat Freiermuth, Marquise Brown, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Aaron Jones, Darren Waller, Diontae Johnson, Derek Carr.

As you can see, picks are valuable and can be used to add more win-now pieces.

Wrap-Up

I understand that you aren’t always going to get massive overpays like the one in the example. This was just to prove that despite massive overpays, many will still prefer the known commodity because they wrongly view picks. But now you know: trading for picks is not a gamble.

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