A Five-Pick Inventory

Joe Hortiz walked into the 2026 NFL Draft holding five picks. He walked out with eight, all by Saturday afternoon, after pulling off three separate trades in three consecutive rounds. By my count, those moves netted the Chargers the equivalent of converting a seventh-rounder into a first-rounder in expected on-field value. By the chart most NFL teams negotiate against, two of those three trades were losses.

That gap is the story.

To get there, we revived a draft chart. We’re calling it SCAV (StormCloud AV), and it’s a regression-smoothed projection of the average career Approximate Value produced at each draft slot. Approximate Value is Pro Football Reference’s single-number measure of a player’s seasonal contribution, designed to be comparable across positions and eras. I built the original version of this chart in 2021 as a FanPost over at Bolts From the Blue, working from every pick made between 2009 and 2018. SB Nation has since deleted the FanPost archive, so the original article no longer exists, but the methodology held up well enough that I’m bringing it back. I’ll publish a separate piece updating the underlying dataset and walking through the math. For now, what matters is what SCAV tries to answer that other charts don’t: what does this pick actually return on the field?

When you put SCAV next to the three other charts in common circulation, something becomes clear. The Jimmy Johnson chart, the one most quoted in trade rooms, doesn’t measure on-field value at all. And Hortiz appears to know it.

Before we get to the trades, the pre-draft picture: Hortiz didn’t enter the 2026 draft with seven picks. He entered with five.

The 2026 seventh-rounder was gone before training camp 2024 ever started, sent to Tennessee in the Elijah Molden trade. The original 2026 fifth-rounder (#162) was gone before Halloween 2025, sent to Baltimore as part of the in-season Odafe Oweh deal that turned into one of the most consequential trades the Chargers made all year. Oweh produced 7.5 sacks in 12 regular season games and three more in the AFC Wild Card win over New England, then signed a four-year, $100 million deal with Washington in March. That contract is projected to net the Chargers a third-round compensatory pick in 2027. Hortiz already won the trade. He’s about to win it again.

But that meant the 2026 draft started with a five-pick inventory: one in each of Rounds 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. By the time the Chargers were on the clock at #22, Hortiz already needed picks. By the time Day 3 ended, he had eight.

Here’s how he got there.

Four Charts, Two Camps

We’re using four charts in this analysis. They split into two camps based on what they measure.

Where all four agree, a trade is unambiguous. Where the behavioral and outcome camps split, the disagreement itself is the finding.

The Jimmy Johnson Gap / Four charts, normalized to pick #1

The chart above is the picture. SCAV (gold) and FS (blue) form the top envelope. JJ (red) and RH (green) collapse to the floor by the end of Round 3. The behavioral and outcome charts have different shapes. The behavioral charts crash through the early rounds, then flatten through Day 3. The outcome charts decline more gradually all the way down. That shape mismatch is what Hortiz trades into. When the slope of the behavioral curve doesn’t match the slope of the outcome curve between two specific picks, a trade across that gap creates value on one chart and not the other. The third trade ran in the opposite direction, by design, and we’ll get there.

Zoom in on the first hundred picks and the four charts fan out clearly:

Rounds 1 to 3 only / The trade space opens up after pick 5

The pick #1 anomaly is real and worth noting. Rich Hill’s chart drops from 100% to 51% by pick #3 because of the QB premium baked into trade history. When teams trade for the top three picks, they’re almost always paying a quarterback tax. SCAV doesn’t see that tax because it measures career production, not transaction price. After the rapid behavioral regression through pick #10, the behavioral charts continue outpacing outcome chart regression until the values become nearly inconsequential. Trading back from Day 1 and Day 2 picks to stockpile early Day 3 picks is a sound strategy for maximizing production out of a draft class.

The Round 2 Slide

The first trade was the cleanest. Hortiz sent pick #55 to New England in exchange for picks #63, #131, and #202. By SCAV, that’s a swap of 22.70 expected AV for 38.06. Hortiz turned a single Round 2 selection into a 67% bump in expected on-field value.

Three of four charts agreed. FS gave the Chargers a +770 point edge. Rich Hill called it +4. SCAV called it +15.36.

Only Jimmy Johnson disagreed, by 23 points. Less than a 7th-rounder’s worth.

This is the cleanest trade-down-for-volume play in the book. The picks acquired weren’t filler. Pick #131 became safety Genesis Smith. Pick #202 became guard Logan Taylor. Two future contributors in a draft where the Chargers needed to fill out the back end of the depth chart at multiple positions. Hortiz traded a single mid-Round 2 pick into two of them.

The most interesting tell is the JJ disagreement. New England’s front office likely walked out of that negotiation believing they got value, because their negotiation tool said they did. By every other measure, they didn’t.

The Round 3 Vacate

The second trade was the loudest. Hortiz sent pick #86 to Cleveland for picks #105, #145, and #206. He didn’t trade down within Round 3. He traded out of it entirely.

By SCAV, the math is staggering: 16.99 expected AV in, 29.70 out. Hortiz nearly doubled the expected value of the pick. This was the biggest absolute SCAV win of the three trades.

Here’s where the chart story gets interesting. JJ said the Chargers gave up 34 points of value. FS said they gained 677. Same trade. Same picks. Different math.

But the picks Hortiz got back outperform that market price by every outcome measure. The story is simple: NFL teams have been undervaluing Day 3, especially early Day 3 picks, relative to their actual expected production for thirty years. Hortiz traded into that gap.

The picks acquired in this deal: #105 became Brenen Thompson, the Mississippi State wideout Hortiz had a late Day 2 grade on. He told reporters in his post-draft presser that Thompson was the player they would have taken at #86 if they couldn’t trade down. #145 became Nick Barrett, the South Carolina defensive lineman who profiles as a rotational run-stopper with flashes of significant upside. #206 became Alex Harkey, an Oregon tackle projected to kick inside.

Three Day 3 picks. Three roster contributors. The cost was a single Round 3 selection in a year where Hortiz had a Day 2 player still on the board after the trade. Hortiz values Day 3 volume more than the behavioral charts price it. That isn’t a hot take. It’s a strategy with an analytical foundation.

The Round 4 Climb

The third trade is where the pattern inverts.

Hortiz sent picks #123 and #204 to Houston in exchange for pick #117. He climbed six spots to lock in Memphis offensive tackle Travis Burke. By SCAV, the trade cost 5.02 expected AV. The Chargers gave up 17.77 in expected on-field value to acquire 12.75.

For the first time, three of the four charts said Hortiz overpaid. FS said -279. RH said -2. SCAV said -5.02.

The only chart that gave the Chargers a win was Jimmy Johnson. By two points. Within rounding error.

Take that in for a moment. In every trade Hortiz made on draft day, the Jimmy Johnson chart told the opposite story from every other chart. Trade 1: JJ said New England won. Trade 2: JJ said Cleveland won. Trade 3: JJ said the Chargers won. SCAV said the exact opposite each time. So did FS. So did RH, mostly.

But before grading this trade-up as a loss, look at what Hortiz has done with this exact same play before.

The Trade-Up Ledger

Burke isn’t the first time Hortiz has paid a small SCAV premium to climb the board. It’s the third.

The pattern across all three trade-ups is consistent. Hortiz pays small premiums to climb. He pays them in late Day 3 capital, either literally or by sliding a mid-round pick down a round. And so far, he has been right about the player he climbed for every time.

That last part is what makes this work. Trade-up math almost always shows a loss on the FS or SCAV charts, because teams behaviorally overvalue the higher rounds and the slot prices reflect that. The question isn’t whether the chart shows a loss. The question is whether the player outproduces the slot. McConkey and Still have already buried that math. Gadsden looks well on his way. Burke is the next bet.

Burke is 6’9″, 325 pounds, First-Team All-AAC, with a 98.0 PFF pass-blocking efficiency grade in 2025. The traits are there. The bet is on the player, not the slot.

Both Sides of the Asymmetry

Step back from the individual trades and the bigger picture sharpens.

Net SCAV across the three 2026 deals: +23.05. That’s roughly the equivalent of converting pick #200 into pick #25. In a draft where the Chargers entered with a five-pick inventory and needed to fill multiple roster holes, that’s a meaningful win.

But the more interesting finding is structural. Jimmy Johnson disagreed with SCAV on every single 2026 trade. Every one. And in two of the three cases, JJ was the only chart in disagreement.

If the chart NFL teams use to negotiate against Hortiz consistently misvalues his trade-down behavior, then his trade partners may feel like they’re winning on the books that matter to them while losing on the books that matter on Sundays. That’s not an accident. That’s an exploitable inefficiency, and it’s been hiding in plain sight since Belichick’s Patriots started running variations of this same playbook in the early 2000s.

The trade-up math runs in the opposite direction, and Hortiz handles it differently. He doesn’t climb unless the cost fits a specific shape: a piece of late Day 3 capital when he is already drafting from a pick count surplus. Picks in the 6th and 7th round have largely been used by Hortiz as trade chips, both to secure cut-candidate players (Taylor Heinicke, Elijah Molden, and Trevor Penning were all traded for 7s) or for these marginal move-ups. The names on his ledger (McConkey, Still, Gadsden) suggest he’s earned the right to that approach. He pays in pick volume to get conviction picks, but only when the price stays small. That’s the trade he’s making, and it’s the disciplined inverse of the trade-down play. Both can work at the same time, especially when Hortiz regularly manages to stockpile extra picks in his war chest.

The Lane Hortiz Operates In

The league has shifted, with more progressive and analytically driven teams incorporating modern draft charts in war rooms, but trades still fall closer to the JJ and RH values because behaviors haven’t significantly shifted on the aggregate. Especially in franchises where job security isn’t guaranteed year over year, GMs are pressured to make safer, more popular decisions. There aren’t many greater dopamine dumps in the offseason than drafting a Day 1 or Day 2 highly coveted prospect that projects as an immediate starter upgrade.

SCAV (StormCloud AV Chart) is a regression-smoothed projection of expected career Approximate Value at each draft slot, built from Pro Football Reference data covering the 2009 through 2018 NFL Drafts. The original version of this chart was published as a Bolts From the Blue FanPost in 2021. A full methodology update is forthcoming. All trade values, pick assignments, and player-to-pick mappings verified via Pro Football Reference. SCAV calculations use double-exponential regression on the 5-year tAV column.