2010 NFL Draft The 2010 NFL Draft was the 75th annual meeting of National Football League ( NFL ) franchises to select newly eligible football players . Unlike previous years , the 2010 draft took place over three days , at Radio City Music Hall in New York City , with the first round on Thursday , April 22 , 2010 , at 7 : 30 p . m . EDT . The second and third rounds took place on Friday , April 23 starting at 6 : 00 p . m . EDT , while the final four rounds were held on Saturday , April 24 , starting at 10 : 00 a . m . EDT . Coverage was provided by both NFL Network and ESPN . The St . Louis Rams , as the team with the worst record during the 2009 season , selected quarterback Sam Bradford with the first pick . Three of the top four picks were members of the Oklahoma Sooners football team , and five of the top six were from the Big 12 Conference . The prime time broadcast of the first round was watched by 7 . 29 million viewers making it the most viewed first round ever and making ESPN the second most watched network of the night . Of the 255 players drafted 216 ( or 84 % ) were among the 327 players who participated in the 2010 NFL Scouting Combine . This matches the average percentage of combine participants among draftees over the past ten years . An additional 39 players who did not attend the combine were selected . There was wide speculation that the 2010 NFL Draft would have a very large number of early entrants because of a possible rookie pay scale to be imposed starting with the 2011 NFL Draft . Eligible underclassmen projected as top NFL prospects risked losing millions of contractually - guaranteed dollars if they did not declare for the draft the year before a new CBA could be reached . The early entry deadline was January 15 . After the early entry deadline had passed , it was confirmed that the 2010 NFL Draft would have fifty - three non - seniors , tying a draft record for the most non - seniors ever . The following is the breakdown of the 255 players selected by position : Changes in draft order . At the 2009 annual owners meeting , NFL owners unanimously approved changes to the order for assigning draft picks , starting with the 2010 draft . The new format took into account the seeding of playoff teams . The two major changes from previous years were : The new order assigns picks for each round as indicated in the table below . With the exception of the changes noted above , the order will generally follow that used in previous years ( i . e . , within a given status , teams with worse regular - season records will pick earlier in the first round , and picks will cycle from round to round among teams that are tied ) . Three coin tosses were necessary to establish the final selection order : Jacksonville , Tennessee , and Atlanta won their flips over Denver , Carolina , and Houston , respectively . Player selection . ! 3 ! ! bgcolor = " # efefef " | 67 . 5 – Supplemental draft selections . Two players were selected in the 2010 Supplemental Draft . The Bears and Cowboys thus forfeited their seventh - round selections in the 2011 draft . Trades . In the explanations below , ( D ) denotes trades that took place during the draft , while ( PD ) indicates trades completed pre - draft .