Edit - Take a look at my expanded thoughts on the NFL Draft Value Chart - and a proposal for revising the Chart - in this post from November 2012.
Let’s say, hypothetically, that you had just traded the best player on your team (one of the best in the league) for a whole mess of draft picks. If you had just done this, wouldn’t you want to convince people of the wisdom of your choice? Wouldn’t the best way to do that be to convince everyone that draft picks, particularly of the type you received, were highly valuable assets? I am not suggesting in that the Herschel Walker trade was anything short of brilliant for the Cowboys (this was not a hypothetical), but in order to convince people of the wisdom of the trade it certainly helped to establish a baseline valuation for draft picks that made the Cowboys’ haul look even better before those picks even had a chance to play out.
Since that time the Draft Value
Chart developed by Jimmy Johnson’s organization in Dallas has become the gospel
for a great number of NFL teams. At various times much of the NFL has used the
chart and reports suggest that a number of teams still do. At a minimum it is still the go-to for reporters speculating on potential trades. Once the chart became widely accepted, draft picks became
easily exchangeable as teams agreed on the value and
constructed trades accordingly.