The rookie pool is, essentially, a cap within a cap. A team's rookie pool allocation is part of, not an addition to, the league's $75.1 million spending limit.
The formula for deriving each team's rookie pool allocation is regarded as Byzantine, not understood by most franchise officials, and is a function of how many picks are exercised by a team and where those picks are made. In addition to the second overall choice in the first round, for instance, Detroit selected high in every stanza, and had extra picks in the fifth and seventh rounds.
Those factors all combined to give the Lions a high rookie pool allocation.
Does this explain it better? This formula sounds worse that the QB rating system...
