Now for later: trading up in time across NFL drafts

We examine 138 cases of National Football League teams temporally trading picks across 30 drafts. We predict a discount rate of 132% per year and find an empirical rate of 165%. For top-10 overall picks, the rate paid is infinity. While general manager experience is unrelated to outcomes, GMs do better when they trade away net-fewer picks. The performances of the player selected with the highest near-term pick and the players selected adjacently are not statistically different, suggesting overconfidence on the part of GMs who trade up. Interestingly, the teams that trade up in time perform no better than their counterparts even in the short-run.