Roger Goodell (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
Roger Goodell and the NFL stand accused of putting together a “top secret” player database, with an anonymous league executive spilling the beans in a recent interview.
According to said exec, the list doesn’t exist for sinister reasons and was created to determine where compensatory picks fall each year.
The compensatory pick formula has been in existence since the salary cap was introduced in 1993. The league’s most recent collective bargaining agreement notes that free agents who sign elsewhere and rank within the top 35 percent of all players in the NFL count as compensatory free agents, known as CFAs.
Any team that loses more CFAs than it signs qualifies for a compensatory pick in the next draft.
But how the NFL determines who falls in the top 35 percent is something else together.
Roger Goodell Reportedly Goes Through The NFL With A Fine-Tooth Comb
Pablo Torre had an unidentified league exec on his show, ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out’ this week. The official’s identity and voice were concealed to preserve anonymity while he discussed the NFL’s “top-secret master list, ranking every player in the league in order of most valuable to least valuable.”
The NFL office keeps a top-secret master list, ranking every player in the league in order of most valuable to least valuable.
They use this list to determine compensatory draft picks for every team.
“It’s like the fantasy football big board of God himself.” 😭 @PabloTorre… pic.twitter.com/Ma8YvKSRDs
— Pablo Torre Finds Out (@pablofindsout) September 12, 2024
“The picks are roughly determined by stacking every player in the National Football League from most highly-paid to least, and there’s a points system that correlates to those tiers,” the exec explained. “Players can achieve extra points based on how much they play and different types of honors they receive at the end of the season.”
According to the executive, one individual is tasked with putting the list together, though they were not aware of how many people around the league are allowed to see it.
