Understanding the NFL's Supplemental Draft

By: The Football Girl | Posted: July 11, 2012

On the surface the NFL’s Supplemental Draft, being held tomorrow, is a lot like a trip to Marshalls. Whether due to a design flaw (skinny jeans with no spandex?), being passed over at the regular price point (skinny jeans for $289?) or a fading fad (skinny jeans, please!) the merchandise winds up there, and not in say, a Neiman Marcus, for a reason. But if you look carefully and weed through the crap, Marshalls will every so often produce something fabulous for your closet.

The Supplemental Draft can do the same for your football team. But as so aptly written by Pro Football Talk this morning, “By nature, if you’re in the Supplemental Draft, there’s a problem.”

The Supplemental Draft, introduced in 1977, was set up to accommodate those players who were ineligible or neglected to make themselves available for the regular NFL Draft. This could be due to a bevy of reasons: academic issues, disciplinary issues or even simply missing the filing date for the main event.

The order of drafting is similar to the regular draft in that it’s based on worst record the previous season. The only difference is all teams with less than six wins are grouped into a lottery with the worst team getting a weighted advantage for the first picks. The other two groups consist of non-playoff teams with over six wins, and the twelve playoff teams. 

If interested in a player, a team submits a bid in the form of a draft pick, and is awarded the player if no one with a higher pick bids on the same player in a higher round.  And if a team is awarded a player in, say, the 5th round of the supplemental draft, they are forfeiting a 5th round pick in the following year’s NFL draft. 

Again if there is a tie in a given group, the lottery, which is performed right before the draft, will determine which team is awarded that player.

This year the players eligible for the Supplemental are as follows:

Quaylon Ewing-Burton, CB, Boise State


Josh Gordon, WR, Utah/Baylor


Adam Harris, RB, Syracuse


Adrian Haughton, OT, Iowa State


Larry Lumpkin, LB, Carson-Newman


Montez Robinson, DE, Georgia


Houston Tuminello, WR, McMurray/Louisiana Tech


Ed Wesley, RB, TCU

The most (and only) buzzed about name is Gordon, the former Baylor wide receiver who was kicked off the team in 2011 for a failed marijuana test. That came on the heels of an arrest for marijuana possession, a charge which was later dropped.

Gordon transferred to Utah for what would have been his junior season, but was required to sit out for a year to maintain eligibility. He never played a down for the Utes and is now looking to enter the NFL with just two years of college ball (and only one as a star) under his belt.

But with great receiver size at 6’3 and 220 pounds, the intrigue is there.

21 NFL teams attended Gordon’s workout on Tuesday, where he posted a 40-time of 4.52. According to CBS Sports’ Jason La Canfora, former Baylor teammate Robert Griffin III hopes his Redskins enter the Gordon sweepstakes.

Most players eligible for the supplemental draft do not get selected, however there have been notable exceptions over the years. They include retired players like Brian Bosworth, Bernie Kosar and Cris Carter, and more recently, Raiders QB Terrelle Pryor and 49ers LB Ahmad Brooks. 

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