George Paton and the NFL draft

The only thing that I can think of that the a dominant team treated the draft differently than the rest of the league, and the NFL, being a copy-cat league, the rest of the teams started doing the same. This led to fewer duds in the draft and the duds generally happened later in the draft. I’m curious to hear your theories about this in the comments if you have them.

The list below is the highest drafted player in every draft this century (including 2000) that never played in an NFL game. The only two teams with three players on this list are the Broncos and the Vikings.

Draft Year Rnd Pick Team Player POS
2000 2 56 MIN Michael Boireau DE
2001 2 51 DEN Paul Toviessi DE
2002 3 86 TAM Marquis Walker WR
2003 4 128 DEN Bryant McNeal DE
2004 3 72 GNB Donnell Washington DT
2005 3 85 SEA David Greene QB
2006 4 104 GNB Cory Rodgers WR
2007 2 49 CIN Kenny Irons RB
2008 4 125 OAK Arman Shields WR
2009 2 63 ARI Cody Brown LB
2010 3 76 NYG Chad Jones DB
2011 5 135 KAN Ricky Stanzi QB
2012 3 79 CHI Brandon Hardin DB
2013 3 89 HOU Brennan Williams OL
2014 3 100 SFO Brandon Thomas OL
2015 2 56 PIT Senquez Golson CB
2016 2 51 NYJ Christian Hackenberg QB
2017 3 82 DEN Carlos Henderson WR
2018 5 138 GNB Cole Madison G
2019 3 67 SFO Jalen Hurd WR
2020 4 125 NYJ James Morgan QB
2021 6 199 MIN Jaylen Twyman DL
2022 3 94 CAR Matt Corral QB
2023 4 118 WAS Braeden Daniels OL
2024 3 74 ATL Bralen Trice DE

The Broncos wasted a second, third and fourth round pick on Toviessi, Henderson, and Bryant respectively. For those older drafts I didn’t look at what team had the most duds. There were 41 guys from the 1995 draft who never played in an NFL game. Compare that to the 2008 and 2012 draft2 where there were two.

Draft Year Drafted Never played in NFL:

• 2018 256 4
• 2017 253 5
• 2016 253 14
• 2015 256 23
• 2014 256 4
• 2013 254 4
• 2012 253 2
• 2011 254 3
• 2010 255 12
• 2009 256 7
• 2008 252 2
• 2007 255 29
• 2006 255 28
• 2005 255 34
• 2004 255 27
• 2003 262 25
• 2002 261 33
• 2001 246 26
• 2000 254 35
• 1999 253 28
• 1998 241 37
• 1997 240 28
• 1996 254 38
• 1995 249 41
• 1994 222 30
• 1993 224 16

Most “modern” drafts finish with about 5300 total value, but below is the plot.

Let’s get back to George Paton though. Drafted AV is the metric (AV = approximate value) that PFR uses to figure out how much value the players drafted by a draft class provided to the team that drafted them. This is a good metric to compare NFL GMs during this timeframe. The Broncos have the 10th most DrAV from the 2021 to 2025 draft classes with 309. About half of that (154) came from the 2021 draft. The Broncos have gotten five first team AP AllPro selections players drafted during this time (three players, five selections). Only the Lions with seven have more. The Lions also lead in DrAV with 419. They have gotten substantially more AV from their 2022 and 2023 drafts than the Broncos. The team with the worst draft results from this time is the Vikings who have less than half of the value gained by the Lions. Interestingly enough, most of the teams in the bottom of this ranking have been losing teams for this entire time or most of it.

The Raiders have one winning season (2021). The Cardinals also have one (2021). The Panthers have none, but they do have a playoff appearance (with an 8-9 record). The Dolphins actually have three but two of them were 9-8 seasons. The Titans have one (2021). The Browns have one (2023). The Vikings have actually have three like the Dolphins, and two of them were really strong seasons (13-4 and 14-3). In both seasons they lost in the WC round of the playoffs.

Obviously this is a time snap-shot which can change fairly dramatically from year to year if multiple players from a draft class finally make a large impact.

The Broncos have three players from the 2021 draft who continue to be a large part of the team’s success: Patrick Surtain, Quinn Meinerz and Jonathon Cooper. They also have two guys who are contributors to the success of other teams with Javonte Williams in Dallas and Baron Browning in Arizona.

The Bronco 2022 class has three guys who will be a significant part of the team in 2026: Nik Bonitto, Luke Wattenberg, and Eyioma Uwazurike. The 2023 class has only Marvin Mims and Riley Moss that predict to be large parts of the 2026 Broncos. The 2024 class has Bo Nix, Jonah Elliss and maybe Toy Franklin (who was not good in 2025). The 2025 draftees could have every player as a significant contributor with the exception of Caleb Lohner. The defensive players all looked decent in limited playing time last season, and the hope is that they will continue to develop and improve this season.

Another way to evaluate drafts is to look at the snaps taken by the draftees and evaluate a team’s drafts based on that. This data is from www.overthecap.com. The Broncos have done well from 2011-2025 in total, but they have not gotten a large percentage of snaps from draftees 2021 to 2025. They are 20th in that evaluation.

Usually when you have a large portion of your snaps from players that were drafted by other teams, you are relying more on free agents (and undrafted free agents) for your snaps. It should be noted that both the Packers and Lions are at the top in OTC’s AND PFR’s evaluations of the draft from 2021 to 2025.