Trent Baalke says 15 or 16 teams turned down his attempts to trade up

The Jacksonville Jaguars made a franchise-record 13 selections during the 2023 NFL draft after three trades made by the team in the first two rounds netted it four extra picks.

After the draft, Jaguars general manager Trent Baalke told reporters that it was not his intention to make that many picks. He just couldn’t find any other team willing to take some of his hands.

“If you look at how the draft went, we tried to trade up today,” Baalke said Saturday. “We went through 15 or 16 teams when we were trying to trade up. Every team behind us and not one would make a move.

“So that happened to us several times in the times we were able to trade back. We just felt that the time we could trade back and get the players that we were planning on picking anyway, and we’re able to do that. So it’s just how the draft went this year.”

While the Jaguars apparently couldn’t find any trade partners willing to move down, evidently other teams didn’t have that problem. There was a record-breaking number of trades made during the draft this year.

Baalke became the interim general manager of the Jaguars during the 2020 season and was promoted to the role full-time shortly after that year ended. In his first two drafts as Jacksonville’s GM, Baalke made three draft day trades and all were to move up the order.

This year, the Jaguars traded four times during the 2023 NFL draft and all were to slide down the order. The first three gave Jacksonville additional picks in Day 3 and the fourth gave the team an extra fourth-round pick in 2024.