I think the main reason the draft was shrunk down to 12 rounds is because the NFL Draft has always been an event that was uniquely made for television. Both the league and the broadcasters realized that 12 rounds for a draft wasn’t holding the attention of the average viewer anymore.

There’s also some indication that there were simply too many draft picks as far as roster usage. Most of the guys who were picked in the final four or five rounds never came close to making a roster. There wasn’t a reason for only one team to have the rights to a player they were never going to put on their team.

As for limiting the number of picks one team can stockpile, I like the fact that a team can rebuild its roster by trading for draft picks. It is pretty cool to see a team reload using just draft picks they picked up by trading away veterans they no longer want.

I like the fact that the NFL has fewer rounds today. It was excessive in the past, and there's nothing stopping a team from stockpiling undrafted free agents, such as Kurt Warner, John Randle, Antonio Gates, Priest Holmes, Tony Romo, and many others from the present era and generations past.

RE the number of trades, I think the NFL has it pretty well hashed out as it stands today. It's fun to see teams remake themselves completely on draft day. Sometimes it works out, as is the case most famously with the Herschel Walker trade that brought Emmitt Smith and half the best players from the 1990s to the Cowboys. And sometimes, like with the Ricky Williams trade for the Saints, it doesn't. But the fun thing is that after a big trade, a team's future is always kind of up in the air and it creates uncertainty and adds intrigue to the upcoming season. The only change I'd make with the draft is limiting the time between picks. After so many months of study, you'd think they could pull the trigger in less than 15 minutes.

I don't think the decrease in rounds has anything to do with diluted talent. I think there are thousands of guys walking around who have the talent to play in the NFL, but they just never got a break. The increase in number of teams is a very good reason as to why they may have shortened it though. My internet sleuthing is failing me as far as trying to find the actual reason. I don't really see any point to limiting teams to one pick per round. Whether a team has 30 picks or or 1, a big part of running a successful football franchise is having people who know how to spot talent, finding ways to get that talent on the roster, and then having the right staff members to develop that talent into skills on the field. Guys like Bill Walsh, or Bill Belichick have turned stockpiling picks and finding talent in the draft into an art form, and the Lombardi Trophies in their collection prove it works.