Buccaneers miss out on compensatory draft picks, again

The NFL just announced the 2017 NFL draft distribution of compensatory draft picks, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will once again not have any — unsurprisingly.

Compensatory draft picks are added to the end of rounds, and awarded based on net free agency losses. The highest compensatory pick a team can receive is a third-rounder, which happens when a top-tier free agent leaves a team that signs very few or very cheap free agents.

This year, a ridiculous 11 third-round picks were awarded to various NFL teams. The Bucs haven’t been able to partake of that bounty either this year or in years past, because they keep signing more players than they lose, and the players they lose rarely sign big contracts.

The team’s biggest free agent loss in recent years was Michael Bennett, but the Bucs signed a slew of free agents in the same year, so that didn’t get them any compensatory picks. In fact, the Bucs have just 18 compensatory picks in their history, and the last time they received one was in 2011 — a seventh-rounder, not even as compensation for losing free agents, but because there were excess picks that had to be distributed to teams.

Instead, the Bucs will have to make do with their seven original picks in this draft. They haven’t traded any away nor gained any, so far, and hold the nineteenth pick in the first round.