Add two more draft picks to the Miami Dolphins total for next month's NFL Draft. The league awarded the 32 "compensatory" picks today, giving Miami two for losing defensive tackle Kendall Langford in free agency last year. The Dolphins additional 5th round pick this year will be the 33rd pick of that round. The seventh round pick is the 44th of the round.
Annually, the league awards 32 picks to teams that lost high profile players in free agency before the previous season. The players cannot have been cut by their previous team, but had to be coming off an expiring contract. Every player a team signs, negates a player they lost, with a lower salaried loss being negated by a higher salary gain.
For example, the Dolphins lost three players for consideration this year, quarterback Chad Henne, cornerback Will Allen and Langford. The team signed cornerback Richard Marshall. Looking at their salaries, Marshall was signed for 3-years, $16 million, which is used to negate the 2-year, $6.75 million contract Henne signed with the Jacksonville Jaguars. That left Langford and Allen to land picks.
After that, no one is really quite sure how the NFL figures out what round to give to each team. It's some secret formula that can be estimated, but no one exactly knows how it will award the picks.
The league awards 32 picks every year, if the secret formula awards less than 32 picks, any extra picks are awarded in draft order in, what is essentially an eighth round.
Oddly, with the awarding of the picks this year, the final pick of the draft will go to the Indianapolis Colts, who held the last pick in the draft last year as well.
The Dolphins now have 11 total picks in April's draft.