How the 2025 Draft order is determined

The NFL Draft order is determined by a combination of regular season records, postseason performance, and the strength of schedule in the 2024 season.

The Super Bowl winner is ranked 32; their opponents are 31.

Next, the remaining teams are assigned to 4 groups based on their playoff performance: losers of the Conference Championships (29, 30), Divisional Playoffs (25-28), and Wild Card games (19-24); and non-playoff teams (1-18).

Within those groups, teams are ordered based on win-loss record in the regular season, with the better record getting the later pick. Teams in different groups with the same W-L record are not tied. For example, the team with the highest record of Wild Card losers will be 24, even if it has a better record than a Divisional Playoff loser.

If there is a tie within a group (examples: 2 Wild Card losers with a 10-7 record, or 4 non-playoff teams with a 8-9 record), there are additional tiebreaker steps, which starts by the easier (lower) strength of schedule picking first. This year, the Steelers, Broncos, and Buccaneers exited in the wild card round, are all tied at 10-7, and have the same strength of schedule. The steps to resolve the tie are:

• First break the intra-AFC tie. Broncos drop down due to the Steelers head-to-head win
• Then break the interconference tie. Buccaneers draft before Broncos due to the Broncos head-to-head win.
• Final first round order is Buccaneers, Broncos, Steelers¹If only two of these teams were tied in a playoff group, the tiebreakers would be as follows: Broncos draft before Steelers (head-to-head loss), Buccaneers before Broncos (head-to-head loss), and Buccaneers before Steelers (worse record in common games, 5-6 vs. 7-4)

Teams that are involved in a tiebreaker will cycle through the order each round, based on the tiebreaker order. Thus, in a 4-team tiebreaker, a team will rotate 1-4-3-2, the second team 2-1-4-3, the third 3-2-1-4, and the fourth 4-3-2-1.

2025 basic draft order

For the 2025 NFL Draft, the basic order of selections shown below (not including trades and compensatory and supplemental selections). PS is how far a team advanced in the postseason. Sched is the win percentage of a team’s opponents (strength of schedule). Subsequent rounds shows the order cycle in Rounds 2-7, where the first round follows the basic order. (When these columns are blank, that team has the same position every round.) Color banded rows group the teams that are involved in the same tiebreaker cycle.

The asterisk indicates the additional tiebreaker steps outlined above.

The 49ers and Falcons have forfeited their fifth-round selections. The 49ers were sanctioned for a salary cap violation caused by accounting errors that miscalculated their total compensation in 2022. The Falcons were docked their draft choice due to tampering violations by contacting three players in 2024 prior to the signing period opening. In the fifth round, the table shows those picks shifting up one.

Image via Green Bay Packers

Footnotes

• 1
  If only two of these teams were tied in a playoff group, the tiebreakers would be as follows: Broncos draft before Steelers (head-to-head loss), Buccaneers before Broncos (head-to-head loss), and Buccaneers before Steelers (worse record in common games, 5-6 vs. 7-4)