Preliminary Draft Order Announced

Updated February 28, 2012

The Indianapolis Colts own the No. 1 pick of the 2012 National Football League Draft, which will be held on April 26-28.

The order of the first round of the 2012 Draft was announced today by the NFL.

The NFL Draft will kick off in primetime for the third consecutive year. The first round will be held on Thursday, April 26 at 8:00 PM ET. The second and third rounds are set for Friday, April 27 at 7:00 PM ET. Rounds four through seven will be held on Saturday, April 28 at noon ET.  

The Colts' choice will be followed by the St. Louis Rams picking second and the Minnesota Vikings third.  

Below is the tentative order of the first round of the 2012 Draft, subject to the results of the playoffs. The draft order is determined by the following procedures:

(A) The winner of the Super Bowl will select last and the other Super Bowl participant next-to-last, regardless of their regular-season record.

(B) The Championship Game participants not advancing to the Super Bowl will select 29th and 30th, according to the reverse order of their standing.

(C) The Divisional Playoff participants not advancing to the Championship Games will select 25th through 28th, according to the reverse order of their standing.

(D) The Wild Card participants not advancing to the Divisional Playoffs will select 21st through 24th, according to the reverse order of their standing.

(E) Non-playoff clubs will select first through 20th, according to the reverse order of their standing.

If ties exist in any grouping except (A) above, they will be broken by strength of schedule (i.e., figuring the aggregate won-lost-tied percentage of each involved club's regular-season opponents and awarding preferential selection order to the club which faced the schedule of teams with the lowest aggregate won-lost-tied percentage).

If ties still exist after applying the strength of schedule tiebreaker, the divisional or conference tiebreakers are applied, if applicable. If the divisional or conference tiebreakers are not applicable, ties will be broken by a coin flip.

Clubs involved in two-club ties will alternate positions from round-to-round. In ties that involve three or more clubs, the club at the top of a tied segment in a given round will move to the bottom of the segment for the next round, while all other clubs in the segment move up one position. This rotation continues throughout the draft.