Not nearly as prominent as the NFL draft in late April, the NFL will hold this year's Supplemental Draft with six eligible players, which takes place at 1 p.m. (ET) on Thursday. There have been 42 players selected in the supplemental drafts and 11 drafted since 2004. The Cincinnati Bengals used their third-round pick on Ahmad Brooks during the 2006 Supplemental Draft.
If a team takes a player this week, those lose that corresponding round during next year's draft. Those players eligible this year are:
DE, James Boyd, UNLV
DT, Nate Holloway, UNLV
DE, Toby Jackson, Central Florida
WR, DeWayne Peace, Houston
WR, O.J. Ross, Purdue
DB, Damond Smith, South Florida
Not sure about those players or the best of class? Per Rob Rang with CBSSports.com:
The two most prominent players are the receivers Peace and Ross, who combined for 110 passes for 1,057 yards and four touchdowns in 2012 and were being counted on by their collegiate teams to produce even more as seniors.
Like most supplemental draft prospects - including several others from this year's class - Peace and Ross requested special eligibility for inclusion into the NFL's annual July draft because each ran into trouble at school.
Peace caught 54 passes for 603 yards and two scores in 2012 for the Cougars. Ross caught 56 passes for 454 yards and two touchdowns in 2012 for the Boilermakers.
Dan Kadar with SB Nation's Mocking the Draft writes:
Boyd is arguably the best athlete of the bunch. A former Southern California recruit, Boyd has size (6'4, 255 pounds) and has played quarterback and tight end. Mostly a backup at UNLV, Boyd started one game last season and had 21 tackles and 2.5 sacks.
Holloway was fighting for a starting spot at UNLV this season, but left the team for undisclosed reasons in June. At 6'3 and 365 pounds, Holloway is by far the largest player in the supplemental draft.
Before the Supplement Draft starts, there is a lottery that will determine who selects where. The Supplemental Draft Lottery Procedures from 2012 (per Pro Football Talk):
The League office will conduct said supplemental draft with member clubs via the NFL Waivers account. Immediately before each supplemental draft is to begin, the League office will conduct a lottery to determine the selection order of member clubs, weighted as follows:
(A) Each member club’s position will be weighted by assigning the weakest club the greatest number of lottery chances and the strongest club the fewest number. Team strength and weakness will be determined by the order of the first round of the immediately prior principal draft, exclusive of any trades affecting that prior draft (i.e., the weakest club will have its name in the drawing 32 times, the next weakest 31 times, etc., until the Super Bowl winner will have its name in once);
(B) Lottery chances for the weakest teams (those teams which won six or fewer games in the prior regular season) will be placed together in a container and drawn to determine the initial arrangement of places in the selection order equal to the total number of those teams;
(C) Lottery chances for the remaining teams, with the exception of the playoff teams, will then be placed together in a container and drawn to determine their places following those determined in the first drawing; and
(D) Lottery chances for the playoff teams next will be placed together in a container and drawn to determine the remaining places in the selection order.