The Cleveland Browns have been very active this offseason and still may have some moves left to make. Most of the team’s biggest moves have come from trades including adding Deshaun Watson, Amari Cooper and Chase Winovich. GM Andrew Berry continued his trading ways during the NFL draft as well.
One of the reasons trades can be useful is the compensatory pick formula used by the NFL. In its simplest form, the formula rewards teams that lose more quality players to free-agent than they sign from other teams. Quite literally, the NFL seeks to compensate teams with picks, hence they are called compensatory picks.
There are details related to the formula including that released/waived players do not count for the team that released them or the team that signed them. Only true free agents who had their contract run out.
