BakoSaint

Compensatory picks are a system that some teams have learned to game, and we are not one of those teams. The formula is very clear and many independent websites are able to forecast the picks very accurately. The big key is that when you add a free agent whose contract with another team ran out, it costs you, but if you trade for a player (ie Marcus Peters, Brandon Cooks, etc) or sign a player who was technically cut (Ndamakong Suh, etc) it costs you nothing. If you get a player via trade or cut, and then the following year their contract runs out and they leave you by normal contract expiration free agency, then adding them counts nothing against you, but losing them does count for you. There are also many technicalities with how option years and abilities to void deals affect whether losing a player counts, so you have to write contracts carefully and not just throw in 'cap wizard' years that mean all your players will leave via being cut.

There is a chance we could get compensation picks in 2020. The Teddy Bridgewater trade was a classic one to possibly get a compensation pick. We traded for him, which cost nothing in the compensation system. But his contract will run out and he may leave. Unfortunately he did not impress much in his start, so we are unlikely to hit the lottery where he leaves on a 15-20 million a year deal and we get a max compensation pick if we dont sign a free agent to match.