NFL Draft order: Cardinals in second slot after Week 12 loss to Chargers

The Arizona Cardinals fell to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday, keeping them second in the 2019 NFL Draft order through Week 12.

Arizona’s strength of schedule, which acts as a tiebreaker for teams with the same record, took a slight hit against the 8-3 Chargers. That and the San Francisco 49ers’ defeat at the hands of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which improved to San Francisco’s strength of schedule, moved the top two teams closer to one another than they were heading into the week.

Across the rest of the bottom-rung of the NFL standings, the results in Week 12 made for seven teams who are within 2.0 games of the 2-9 Niners, Cardinals and Oakland Raiders.

Those three teams, in that order, sit atop the NFL Draft order with five more weeks to play in the season.

Here are a few rules about how the NFL Draft order is set:

• The top of the draft order is decided by the inverse winning percentage of non-playoff teams.

• Tiebreakers are based on inverse strength of schedule — the aggregate winning percentage of a team’s opponents. In other words, the team that played the weakest schedule with the worst combined record will earn a higher pick.

Here’s a look at the top of the NFL Draft order after Week 12.

Pick	Team	Record	Strength of schedule
1	San Francisco 49ers	2-9	.511
2	Arizona Cardinals	2-9	.528
3	Oakland Raiders	2-9	.557
4	New York Jets	3-8	.503
5	New York Giants	3-8	.511
6	Jacksonville Jaguars	3-8	.538
7	Atlanta Falcons	4-7	.509
8	Detroit Lions	4-7	.511
9	Buffalo Bills	4-7	.517
10	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	4-7	.528

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