How has John Elway done in the NFL draft overall? Here is a complete breakdown of all the draft classes from 2011-2019.

I know that AV (approximate value) is not a great stat, but it is still the best stat available for comparing players who play different positions in terms of their contributions to the team. I also know that John Elway was not really involved in the Denver Broncos draft in 2011. With those two caveats in mind, let’s look at how the Broncos compare to the rest of the league in terms of drafting from 2011 through 2019.

This analysis was done with data from pro-football-reference.com. I looked at the total Career AV from players drafted by every team from 2011 through 2019. I also called out the best player that each team drafted and look at how they fared beyond their best selection. Note that I give teams credit for value that players generate even if the value was for another team (drafting team still gets credit for drafting the player and nominally developing). What I did not do in this study was look at how much expected career value would have resulted in getting the average from every player at every spot for a given team.

In other words I did not look at return on investment given how much draft capital a team had to invest over the last nine drafts. Perennial losers had much more draft capital and hence should have gotten much more from the their picks than perennial winners.

There’s a whole host of information in this table so let’s make some sense of what is here.

The range of the best team Carolina (13.43) to the worst team San Francisco (8.10) in terms of average career AV per pick is quite large. It’s almost as large as the range between the best player (by career AV) taken in the last nine drafts (Russell Wilson - 108) and the “worst best” (lowest best player by career AV, Blake Bortles - 44).

From a percentage standpoint only three teams get 13% or more of their career AV from a single player: Denver (13.1% from Von Miller), Atlanta (13.4% from Julio Jones) and Carolina (13.4% from Cam Newton). It is interesting to note that so far all three of those players have played their entire careers with the team that drafted them. This will change with Cam no longer in Charlotte.

Removing the best pick and re-evaluating the quality of each team’s draft in also informative. Note that it doesn’t change the relative rankings much. For example the Broncos drop from 19th down to 21st. While the Chiefs move from 3rd up to 1st. The Titans, whose best pick now plays for Denver, stay at 17th.

It should be noted the the change in AV per pick (delta) for the Broncos (1.27)is one of the largest. Only Carolina (1.59) and Atlanta (1.37) have larger drop offs when you remove their best pick.

You should also note the 1st team Pro-Bowl and 1st team All-Pro selections columns. Note that his is total selections NOT total number of players who have been selected. For example the Broncos have three first team Allpro Selections, but those all came from one player, Von. Cincy and Washington have zero AllPro selections and are the only teams with zero.

It’s pretty crazy to think that the Jets (5) and Patriots (6) have about the same number of first team Pro-Bowl selections from their 2011-2019 draftees. The two teams have been almost opposite in terms of their fortunes over the past nine seasons. It also goes to show how useless Pro-Bowl selections are as a tool for evaluating draft success. The range of 5 (NYJ) to 32 (DAL) is quite large, despite both teams having the same number of total playoff victories during this time-frame - zero.