2011 NFL draft The 2011 NFL Draft was the 76th installment of the annual NFL Draft , where the franchises of the National Football League select newly eligible football players . Like the 2010 draft , the 2011 draft was held at Radio City Music Hall over three days : this year , the first round took place on Thursday , April 28 , 2011 ; the second and third rounds took place on Friday , April 29 ; with the final four rounds on Saturday , April 30 , 2011 . The Carolina Panthers , who had the worst record for the 2010 NFL season at 2 – 14 , had the right to the first selection in each round of the draft . With the first pick the Panthers selected Auburn University quarterback Cam Newton , who was the 2010 Heisman Trophy winner . A second Heisman Trophy winner , running back Mark Ingram from Alabama was selected by New Orleans late in the first round . This was the eleventh draft which included multiple Heisman winners , and the first time ever that it has occurred in consecutive drafts ( Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow in 2010 ) . Five of the first six picks played college football in the Southeastern Conference ( SEC ) . Teams were allowed ten minutes to make each selection in the first round , seven minutes per selection in the second round and five minutes in each of the subsequent rounds . Impact of labor situation . Despite an ongoing labor dispute between league owners and players over a new collective bargaining agreement ( CBA ) , a provision in the expired CBA ensured that this draft would still take place , despite the fact that the owners had imposed a lockout to prevent the start of the league year . Fans in attendance at the draft expressed their displeasure with the lockout by booing NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during the event and chanting " We want football . " Due to the labor situation and the lockout , franchises were not able to trade players for draft selections ( trades involving " only " selections are permitted ) , and will be unable to sign or even contact drafted or undrafted players until the lockout is lifted . Because of the lockout , the Panthers could not sign or even negotiate with their first draft pick before the draft began , as other teams have done in years past . The restriction on trading players extended to players selected in this draft — teams were unable to swap " any " player once selected , e . g . as happened in 2004 when the San Diego Chargers and New York Giants completed a draft day trade involving Eli Manning and Philip Rivers who had been selected first and fourth respectively . In addition , with no agreement in place between owners and players mandating future drafts , teams were advised by the league that any trades involving " future " draft picks would be made at the teams ' " own risk " . This warning did not dissuade several teams from making trades involving future selections . The National Football League Players Association ( NFLPA ) considered plans to dissuade potential prospects from attending the draft , but a record 25 potential draftees attended the event , including Von Miller , who was one of the named plaintiffs in the players ' antitrust lawsuit against the league . Early entrants . A record 56 underclassmen announced their intention to forgo their remaining NCAA eligibility and declare themselves eligible to be selected in the draft . To be eligible for the draft , a player must be out of high school for at least three years . The selection of Newton , a junior , marked the third straight draft where the first overall selection was an underclassman . Since non - seniors were first eligible to be drafted in 1990 , fourteen first overall picks ( including six of the last seven ) have been players who have entered the draft early . Eight of the first ten players chosen in this draft were non - seniors , which broke the record of six set in 1997 and matched in 2006 . Jake Locker and Von Miller were the only two seniors among the first ten draftees . Determination of draft order . The draft order is based generally on each team ' s regular season record , with the exception of the teams making the playoffs in , who are placed at the end of the draft order in the order in which they were eliminated . Player selections . Trades and notes . In the explanations below , ( D ) denotes trades that took place during the draft , while ( PD ) indicates trades completed pre - draft . Forfeited picks . Two picks in the 2011 draft were forfeited : Selections by college conference . The players selected in this draft played in the following Division I FBS college football athletic conferences :