Kevin Costner Everett Collection

In the movie "Draft Day," which opens in theaters Friday, Kevin Costner plays the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, a woebegone franchise with a downtrodden fan base and a roster sorely in need of star power.

None of which sounds terribly far-fetched.

But what unfolds over the rest of the movie might require a bigger stretch of the imagination from NFL fans. It's not just that the Browns manage to get through the first round without doing something brainless like drafting Brandon Weeden.

It's that Costner's character succeeds in pulling off a dizzying series of deals that, in sum, would go down as one of the most one-sided draft-day thefts in the league's recent history. (If you would rather not know about the brilliant and frankly bewildering trades that occur in the movie, you should stop reading here.)

Suffice to say, the Browns end up with two first round picks, including the No. 1 overall selection, and a star punt returner, all in exchange for their second-round pick and future second-round selections in 2015 and 2016.

To get a sense of how that bonanza would stack up against real-life trades, we consulted the NFL draft value chart, which has been used by NFL teams for nearly three decades to determine the value of draft picks in potential trades. According to the chart, Cleveland's draft-day trades in the movie yielded a value of 2,020 points, in addition to that star punt returner. There were five draft-day trades involving first-round picks last year in the "real" NFL. None had a team gaining more than 520 points on the draft value chart.

Even the splashiest trade of recent years doesn't come close. According to the chart, the Rams gained only 550 points when the Washington Redskins shipped them three first-round picks to draft Robert Griffin III at No. 2 overall in 2012.

But as fanciful as the movie may seem, Costner's draft-day maneuvering can't be considered the most implausible deal in NFL history. That honor goes to Mike Ditka's New Orleans Saints, who surrendered eight draft picks and 2,745 points to the Redskins in 1999 to take Ricky Williams at No. 5 overall.

—Jonathan Clegg