NFL Supplemental Draft: 4 players will be involved

The NFL Supplemental Draft takes place Thursday at 1pm and there will be four players eligible to be selected.  New Mexico wide receiver Chase Clayton, North Carolina linebacker Darius Lipford, Virginia-Lynchburg defensive tackle Lakendrick Ross and SMU running back Traylon Shead will be the four players up for bid.

Where the NFL Draft has an order and teams make picks, the supplemental draft has a bidding system.  Teams are able to bid picks they have in the 2015 NFL Draft secretly for a player.  If two teams bid the same pick in a round for a prospect, the 2014 NFL Draft order determines which team gets the player.  The team gets the rights to the player and uses their 2015 pick to make the selection.

Typically, teams are relatively conservative with their approach in the supplemental draft, but a few players have gone quite high including Bernie Kosar, whom the draft was invented to accommodate.  The Cleveland Browns used a first round pick to secure Kosar, who was trying to go to Cleveland.  Steve Walsh was a first round pick in the 1989 supplemental draft to the Dallas Cowboys after they took Troy Aikman with their first pick in the ’89 draft.  Recently, Josh Gordon went for a second round pick to the Browns while Terrelle Pryor was a third round pick for the Oakland Raiders.

It is unclear if any of the prospects in this year’s supplemental draft will get picked at all as the class does not have much in terms of star power.  All four players could end up being undrafted free agents and have to try to make their way along that route.