Draft planner; schedule unlikely today

Don't look for the NFL regular season schedule to be released today by the NFL. Sometime later in the week is now the plan.

Looking ahead to the weekend of April 26 and 27, the NFL Draft, remember that Rounds 1 and 2 only will be held Saturday. Round 3 was moved to Sunday this year.

Round 1 will begin at 3 p.m. April 26. Teams will have 10 minutes. Barring a trade, and if the eight team selecting ahead of the Bengals take all 10 minutes allotted, the Bengals will pick around 4:20 p.m. Teams have 15 minutes in 2007.

Teams will have seven minutes to make their pick in the second round, down from 10 in previous years.

Round 3 will begin Sunday at 10 a.m. In Rounds 3-7, teams will still have five minutes to pick. The Bengals select 14th in the third round, so they could be making their pick around 11:10 a.m. April 27.

"What we were trying to do with the changes we made in the draft is make it more entertaining and make it more fun for the fans," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said April 2 at the end of the annual league meeting. "There was a significant amount of time during the picks that teams just sat on their picks, waiting to see if somebody came to them. We felt that it was a time that was not necessary."

The Bengals will have two picks in the third round. The NFL announced the awarding of four compensatory picks March 31 to the Bengals. Original picks can be traded. Compensatory picks can not.

The team's 10 picks:

Round / Round pick / Overall pick / Type
1 / 9 / 9 / Original
2 / 15 / 46 / Original
3 / 14 / 77 / Original
3 / 34 / 97 / Compensatory
4 / 13 / 112 / Original
5 / 12 / 145 / Original
6 / 11 / 177 / Original
6 / 41 / 207 / Compensatory
7 / 37 / 244 / Compensatory
7 / 39 / 246 / Compensatory

The Bengals traded their original seventh round pick, the 10th pick of the seventh round and 217th overall, to St. Louis in September in exchange for backup quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.