2018 NFL Draft Primer

After weeks of anticipation – or months, if your favorite team was eliminated early from playoff contention – the 2018 NFL draft finally gets underway tonight in Dallas. Pro Football Rumors will have you covered for the entire three-day event, passing along all 256 picks, along with all the trades, news, and rumors that come along with the draft.

While ESPN and NFL Network reporters typically don’t scoop teams’ draft picks before they’re announced on the TV broadcast, writers from other outlets have been known to report picks a few minutes before they’re officially announced. If and when that happens this year, we won’t be “spoiling” picks ahead of time on our social media accounts, so if you want to be kept in suspense until commissioner Roger Goodell makes his announcements, you’re safe to follow us on Twitter or Facebook without having to worry that those surprises will be ruined.

However, if a trusted reporter does get word of a pick before it happens, we’ll be passing it along on our site. So if teams’ picks are being reported ahead of time, and you want to know them immediately rather than waiting for an announcement from Goodell, be sure to refresh ProFootballRumors.com early and often tonight. Our post recapping the first-round results will be updated with teams’ picks as soon as they’re reported, even if that happens before they’re formally announced on ESPN.

With that in mind, here’s some info to get you prepared for the 2018 draft:

• The schedule for this year’s draft is as follows:
  • Day 1 (Thursday): Round 1, 8pm ET/7pm CT
  • Day 2 (Friday): Rounds 2-3, 7pm ET/6pm CT
  • Day 3 (Saturday) Rounds 4-7, 12pm ET/11am CT
• Want to find this year’s full draft order? We’ve got every single selection selection listed here.
• Here’s a rundown of draft capital, by team. The Packers lead the way with 12 picks.
• We also took a closer look at how exactly this year’s traded picks changed hands, and how 2018’s compensatory picks were assigned.
• All of our posts discussing news and rumors related to the 2018 draft can be found on this page, though given how much the draft has dominated the NFL news cycle lately, it doesn’t look much different from our main page at this point.