2017 Supplemental Draft News & Rumors

If you blinked, you might have missed this year’s NFL Supplemental Draft. Luckily for you, you didn’t miss much. The draft has concluded with zero players selected, according to the league office.

This year, there were only two players eligible for the second chance draft: Georgia Military College defensive end Tavares Bingham and Western New Mexico running back Marques Rodgers. There wasn’t much buzz about either player heading into this week.

Bingham spent time at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College before moving on to GMC. At GMC, he recorded 12 tackles and three sacks across six games in 2015. Bingham didn’t play last season because he burned through his junior college eligibility and didn’t have the grades to get into to a four-year school.

Rodgers also missed the 2016 season due to academic ineligibility. In 2015, however, he ran for 1,283 yards and ten touchdowns and added 61 catches. Despite that showing at his Division II school, all 32 teams declined the opportunity to claim him today.

The supplemental draft allows clubs to select players who, for one reason or another, were unable to enter the standard draft. When a team selects a player in the supplementary draft, it forfeits its corresponding pick in the following year’s standard draft. For example, if a club were to select a player in the fifth round of this year’s supplemental draft, it would have lost its 2018 fifth-rounder as a result. No team was willing to give up as much as a seventh round pick next year for either Bingham or Rodgers.

The NFL’s annual supplemental draft will take place July 12. Only two prospects, Georgia Military College defensive end Tavares Bingham and Western New Mexico running back Marques Rodgers, are eligible this year, as Rob Rang of NFLDraftScout first reported (on Twitter).

The 6-foot-4, 290-pound Bingham divided his amateur career between Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and GMC, and he collected 12 tackles and three sacks at the latter institution in six games in 2015. Bingham didn’t play last season because he had exhausted his junior college eligibility and, according to GMC head coach Bert Williams, didn’t have the grades to transfer to a four-year school (via Chase Goodbread of NFL.com).

Like Bingham, Rodgers didn’t take the field last season because of academic ineligibility. Rodgers was a standout the previous year, though, as he picked up 1,283 yards and 10 touchdowns as a rusher and added 61 catches.

Using a supplemental pick on either of these players would cost a team a corresponding selection in the 2018 NFL Draft. For instance, because the Rams used a supplemental fifth-rounder on offensive tackle Isaiah Battle in 2015, they had to give up a fifth-rounder in the ensuing NFL draft. While there were six prospects in last year’s supplemental draft, none came off the board. Those players immediately became unrestricted free agents.