The NFL will hold the 2017 Supplemental Draft next Wednesday, July 12, and two players are eligible. Georgia Military College defensive end Tavares Bingham and Western New Mexico running back Marques Rodgers will be available to all 32 NFL teams.
A player is eligible for the supplemental draft when their eligibility status has changed since the end of that year’s draft. Issues ranging from academic to off-field can result in a player being eligible. They apply for the draft, and then teams submit blind bids to select a player. The NFL uses a lottery to determine order. Teams are weighted based on record, similar to the NBA lottery, but they are broken down into three groups. The first tier is teams with six or fewer wins the previous season. The second tier is teams with seven or more wins that didn't make the playoffs. The final tier is the 12 playoff teams.
Players are selected much like a silent auction in which teams email in the player they want and what round pick they would select that player. The highest submitted selection gets the player, and that team forfeits the corresponding pick in the next year’s draft.
In 2011 the Raiders took part in the Supplemental Draft, putting in a third round bid for former Ohio State QB Terrelle Pryor. No other team had bid higher so Pryor was a Raider. He became Al Davis’s final draft pick as Davis passed a few months later. Then the new regime, which came in the following offseason, was without a third round pick in their first draft. Instead they were saddled with a supposed quarterback who forced a trade two years later for the last tradable pick in the draft and only later finally realized he should switch positions to receiver.
This year’s crop is not a great one.
According to the Georgia Military College site, Bingham is a 6-4, 290-pound defensive end who played six games last season with 12 combined tackles, 3.0 sacks, and 6.0 tackles for loss. He had transferred from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.
Rodgers (5’10, 173 pounds) didn’t play in 2016 due to academic reasons. In 2015 he ran for 1,283 yards and caught 61 passes in 2015. He ran for 1,296 yards as a freshman.
Neither player looks like they would be of the level that they would be considered draftable. No players were selected in last year’s supplemental draft and I wouldn’t expect either of these players to be selected this year.
After that, who knows.
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