The Miami Dolphins traded wide receiver Jaylen Waddle to the Denver Broncos on March 18 for a bevy of 2026 NFL draft picks.
Those picks are setting Miami up for a lot of action in the early rounds.
Denver sent Miami its Nos. 30, 94 and 130 picks, giving the Dolphins seven selections in the first 100 picks. That’s two more than any other team and more than twice as many as the per-team average of 3.1. This year, the first three rounds total exactly 100 picks.
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Only the Pittsburgh Steelers come close, with five top-100 selections, including No. 76 from the Dallas Cowboys and No. 99 as a compensatory pick. Pittsburgh also holds the most overall picks in 2026 with 12. Miami, Jacksonville, Baltimore and New England all currently have 11.
No other team has more than four picks in the top 100, making the gap between Miami and the rest of the field unusually wide.
Looking at draft history, the Dolphins’ 2026 haul could tie an all-time league high. Since the NFL became a 32-team league in 2002, only one team — the Arizona Cardinals in 2024 — has had seven picks in the first 100 selections, per a count of Pro Football Reference data.
Miami last came close in 2020, when it held six top-100 picks and selected Tua Tagovailoa fifth overall. In terms of total picks, Minnesota in 2020 had 15 total, meaning the Steelers are still three away from the record.
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Of course, there’s still plenty of time for the order to change before the draft begins in Pittsburgh on April 23. And the draft itself tends to reshape the board in a hurry — there were 35 draft-related trades last year during the event.
DIG DEEPER:
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2026 NFL Draft: Dolphins set for record-trying haul after Waddle trade
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