Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson looks forward to draft picks the way kids view Christmas morning. 

He rarely trades up and often grabs an extra pick by trading down, banking that the player he wants next will still be available when his lowered position comes around. 

So the team and Green Bay fans will be glad to know the Packers picked up a pair of sixth-round compensatory selections — numbers 210 and 212 overall — from the NFL on Monday in payment for losing Evan Dietrich-Smith (to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and James Jones (to the Oakland Raiders). They nearly received an additional pick, a seventh-rounder, for Marshall Newhouse (Cincinnati Bengals) but the NFL used up its full capacity of 32 before they reached the position it assigned to his value.

So Thompson will receive nine total picks in this year’s draft, at least one per each of seven rounds, with three in the sixth. Compensatory picks cannot be traded.

The Packers were major players in free agency last year with Julius Peppers and Letroy Guion, but both had been released from their teams before Green Bay jumped in, so they did not figure into the compensatory pick equation.