The NFL draft is a bit of a lottery at the best of times – I think any seasoned NFL fan would agree. For every hit in the 7th round that goes onto be the best franchise lineman in your teams history, there’s a first overall pick that goes onto be another teams’ third stringer within 4 years. With that in mind, we’re going to take a look at the last 10 years’ worth of first overall picks, and see how their careers panned out.
I should caveat this with saying – in the teams’ hopes and dreams the draft would be fool-proof. Teams pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, hiring and firing scouts whose entire roles depend on evaluating the revolving door of college talent waiting to step up to the National Football League. As we’ve seen, evaluating a talent is one thing, but projecting how good a talent can be, and how that talent will progress is another thing entirely.
This Decade (2020-2025)
Flashback to last year, 2025, and the first overall pick in the draft is Cam Ward to the Tennessee Titans, a promising young Quarterback. Probably worth noting – a lot of the players we’ll discuss in this list will be quarterbacks, and most of the time they’ll be drafted by teams in, let’s say a “rebuild” to be diplomatic. With Cam Ward, we only have one season to go off of, and given the Titans ended the season with an abysmal record of 3 and 14, there’s only so much that can be garnered from his first season in professional football. With this being said, there were definitely some positives from Cam Ward’s first season. Whether or not he can live up to the title of “franchise quarterback” certainly remains to be seen. But with the amount of money spent in free agency, a year under his belt and a new head coach in Robert Saleh, I think this is definitely a situation to keep an eye on.
Back to the 2024 draft now, we look to the Windy City, as all eyes were on the Chicago Bears when they selected Caleb Williams first overall. Now this is certainly a promising pick. Last season, the Bears had little expectation and ended up being one of the better teams in the NFL, when they claimed the NFC North title for the first time since 2018, and this being the first time they didn’t finish rock bottom of the division in the last three seasons. A huge achievement given the swell of competition in their division. Should his trajectory keep going on the course it’s on, I’d say Caleb could be well on track to become the face of the Bears, and possibly the league. However his career is still very young and – not to sound to pessimistic – the Bears are a prime regression candidate like last years’ Washington Commanders. Watch this space.
Going all the way back to 2023, and we come to the draft where Bryce Young entered the league. The Carolina Panthers quarterback has had an up-and-down time of it ever since joining the league in 2023, with many seeming unable to make their minds up about him at the time of writing. With him coming into the 4th year of his contract, now is the”prove it” years of his rookie deal, to see whether his 5th year option will be exercised and then whether he gets a typically huge extension. In parts, Young’s play has been excellent, in other parts, it’s been questionable. His physique is often brought into question when comparing him to other quarterbacks, as he’s one of the very few that come in under 6”0, prompting many to wonder whether he’s unable to see over the offensive line. As a vertically challenged man myself, I must argue against this; however I am not an NFL quarterback. I like Bryce Young as a player, and it must be noted that the Panthers aren’t always the franchise furthest away from disaster, and owner David Tepper never being too far away from the news for less than ideal reasons. With this in mind his time in Carolina hasn’t always been setup for him to have the greatest of success, but I think he’s got promise.
In 2022 the NFL welcomed a first overall pick that wasn’t destined to play under centre, but rather to be one of the men trying to rip the opposing quarterback’s head off. Defensive lineman Travon Walker was this year’s first overall pick. Whilst on paper he’s not been as productive as his classmate Aiden Hutchinson, he’s been deemed worthy of a four-year, $110 million extension from the Jaguars who drafted him, so in their eyes they’ve got their guy. He’s a solid, and very durable defensive lineman, racking up 27.5 sacks across his first 4 seasons in the league, and has started 60 out of a possible 63 games. For sure he’s been a solid recoup for where he was selected.
2021 now, and drafting first overall is our friends the Jacksonville Jaguars – and this pick is why they didn’t select a quarterback first the next year. Trevor Lawrence enters the league, and the biggest thing about his arrival is for sure his hair, as the sale of conditioner in Jacksonville spiked 150% with his arrival. All jokes aside, Lawrence has had a turbulent time in the NFL since being drafted. He entered the league with promises of him being “the next Patrick Mahomes” and was lauded as a “generational talent”. The issue with describing someone in those terms, is when they enter the league and don’t instantly start winning, doubts raise their ugly heads very, very quickly. In Lawrence’s defence, he’s been through three offensive co-ordinators already in his young NFL career, and has probably only started to live up to the hype of his arrival now, leading the Jaguars to a 13-4 season last year and only just getting picked off by the Buffalo Bills in the post-season, a team who are lead by one of if not the best quarterbacks in the league. He’s recently received a mammoth 5 year, $275 million extension and is finally looking like the player we all thought he’d be.
2020, I know, I don’t want to talk about it either. But in this year that everything went horribly wrong, for the most part the NFL continued the best it could. The draft still went ahead, and the Cincinnati Bengals drafted Joe Burrow – a choice that would dramatically change their franchise. Joe Burrow is now lauded as one of the best quarterbacks in the league, however Joe’s case isn’t as straightforward as that. He led his Bengals to a Super Bowl appearance in just his second season in the NFL, bested by the Los Angeles Rams at So-Fi Stadium. Since then, he’s had a very tumultuous career. A lot of this has come down to injury. He’s struggled a lot with staying on the field, and as an NFL player, sometimes your best ability is availability. The other issue has been as Joe Burrow is incredibly well paid, and so are his weapons on offence with his input, the Bengals have struggled to create a defence that’s even remotely competent, meaning that even when he plays lights out it’s sometimes not enough. In terms of player value, it’s hard to argue the Bengals didn’t spend the first pick wisely, but a lot of things after this decision certainly haven’t gone as they planned.
2016-2019
In 2019 the NFL draft was headed by the Arizona Cardinals. Kyler Murray entered the league with the Cards, and what a strange story he has had so far. He came into the league as one of the most athletically gifted quarterbacks we’ve seen, and he still is to this day, but that hasn’t equated to success. With the Cardinals, Kylar had some very promising seasons, leading to himself and his coach Cliff Kingsbury receiving huge extensions. Kylar’s extension however, included an “independent study” clause, specifically outlining how much time he should spend watching game tape every single week, which from the outside world starts to raise questions. These questions have never truly gone away, with people questioning whether his true focus in life is football, and whether instead it might be his love for Call Of Duty. At the time of writing Murray and the Cardinals have recently ended their working relationship coming with a hit to Arizona’s cap space as they look to rebuild their roster, and he’s recently signed with the Vikings for the veteran league minimum of $1.6 million. A talented player who on his day is a nightmare to stop, now looking to rebuild his career competing with J.J. McCarthy in Minnesota.
2018 brings us to Cleveland, and although Arizona may not be the most serious franchise in the league, Cleveland is the full clown show. Many years before Cleveland handed out the worst contract in sports history, they drafted Baker Mayfield. Baker, another quarterback with a very storied history since he joined the National Football League, became something of a cult hero in Cleveland, with many fans falling in love with the young quarterback. He even led them to the playoffs in 2020 and even won a playoff game with the team. However there were issues with the team, as they expressed their desire to chase after the aforementioned worst contract in sports history. Baker and the Browns split, at which point he took a road trip across the NFL. At first he landed in Carolina, at the same time as Sam Darnold – which seems crazy now right? He was again traded to the Los Angeles Rams, where standing in for Matt Stafford he did a standup job, and showed people he was again ready for a starting role in the NFL. In come the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Mayfield has been their starting QB ever since, and has cemented himself as their franchise guy post Tom Brady – which in itself is a hell of a statement. Whether he’s lived up to first overall pick is up to interpretation, but he’s had an incredible and interesting NFL journey.
2017, the Cleveland Browns are up again, and Myles Garrett announced himself to the National Football League. Myles becomes the second and last player on this list who isn’t a quarterback – I told you this was certainly a theme within the draft. As a pass rusher, Garrett has one job; take down the other teams’ quarterback. This is a job he does, possibly better than anyone else in the league. He currently holds the sack record for a single season with 23. He frustratingly equalled the previous record of 22 with a handful of games remaining and only just got the record over the line. Unfortunately with playing for a team that is like going for a Sunday drive with Rashee Rice behind the wheel, the sack record and overall standard of play from Myles hasn’t come with much other success, post-season appearances have been at a premium and the thought of a Lombardi trophy and a ring are as far away as they have ever been in Cleveland. With all of the above in mind, of all the players in this list, Myles Garrett is for sure the best value pick at Number 1 overall – to date.
Finally we go all the way back to 2016, when grass truly felt greener. Jared Goff, is drafted into the league by the LA Rams, and the future for the California franchise looks good. In 2018, Goff became the youngest quarterback to win the NFC Championship game, only to be unfortunately taken down by the Patriots in the big game. Despite a record of 42-27 as their starting quarterback, coach Sean McVay decided the franchise would move in a different direction; sending Goff to the Lions – who at the time were an absolute trash fire – with Matt Stafford coming the other way. Both franchises since then have moved in positive directions, and looking at Goff’s career now, he was a staple of LA being consistent challengers, and has been a key part of the rebuild of the Detroit Lions, taking them from a bottom feeder team to a consistent Super Bowl contender. Personally, Goff doesn’t do it for me, and I don’t think he’s lived up to being a number one overall pick, but you cannot doubt his talent or his clear ability to be an incredibly positive leader within a locker room.
Takeaways
So what can we garner from the last 10 years of first overall draft picks? From this limited study, the first picks more often than not have a lot of potential; but whether they live up to that and be what the league thinks they’re going to be is something different entirely. Some of these have been surefire hits, and some the jury is very much still out on them. But do we invest too much in pick number one? There are more than enough hits with much later picks, like Tom Brady, ever heard of him? Brady was selected at pick 199 and went on to have quite a successful career. What happened to the 198 before him? Well that’s a much longer article for a day that isn’t today.
There are also some less dramatic examples but notable ones would include;
- Patrick Mahomes – 10th overall – still early but not deemed the number one prospect in the class
- Josh Allen – 7th overall – he was selected after Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold, and I would argue he is a much better player than both
- Brock Purdy – 262nd overall – Mr Irrelevant has never been more relevant, leading the 49ers almost to a Super Bowl and being one of the best QB’s in the league
- Justin Jefferson – 22nd overall – possibly the best receiver in football and wasn’t valued until the middle of the first round
The NFL draft is, as Mike Florio would describe it, “a crapshoot” at the best of times. The first overall pick is a very powerful thing, you have the pick of every single player in the draft, but it’s only powerful in the right hands. Some would say it’s a structural issue, but more times than not the first pick is in the hands of franchises that haven’t been effective or aren’t setup for success. One pick can totally change a franchise’s outlook, like Jayden Daniels with the Commanders, or some of the players mentioned above in this piece. But picks can also be wasted, and that is something we also see far too much.
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