Every offseason the NFL league offices award compensation draft choices to teams based on free agents lost in the previous offseason. On Friday teams found out which picks they were being awarded.
The Steelers were not one of the teams to be awarded a draft choice or more. The Bengals on the other hand were awarded 4 picks after losing lots of talent prior to the 2017 season.
It's not completely clear how the NFL calculates these picks because they don't divulge that type of information to teams. But there is a general idea of how they do things.
Basically say the Steelers lost Lawrence Timmons to the Dolphins last season for a total contract of 12 million. But then the Steelers sign Tyson Alualu and for the sake of explaining this let's say he signed for 10 million. That would cancel each other out.
If Le'Veon Bell would leave and sign for 80 million with another team this offseason the Steelers would receive a 3rd round compensation pick next year which is the highest possible for instance.
