George Paton has now led five drafts as the GM for the Broncos and the Broncos have excelled in those drafts. Normally you don’t evaluate a draft until three years after so the 2024 and 2025 drafts are not “done baking” yet, but the other three drafts (he took over prior to the 2021 draft) have been excellent. Pro-football-reference.com has a metric called approximate value (AV) they use drAV for value that a player generates for the team that drafted him. AV allows players to be compared even if they don’t play a position that generates stats. Using this metric we can see how every team in the NFL has drafted over the past five drafts. Keep in mind that the overall view does not adjust for when a player was picked, but merely that they were picked – that will be discussed later.

The Bronco drafts during John Elway’s years as GM were mostly poor.

The Broncos have had 38 total picks and those picks have generated 309 pts of AV for the team or 8.1 per pick which is fifth best in the NFL over this timespan. Only the Lions (11.6), Chiefs (9.7), Texans (8.6) and Bucs (8.4) have been better. The team with the worst average is the Vikings at 4.2.

The teams in the bottom five have generally been bad over the last five seasons with the exception of the Vikings who have been decent. The Browns, Titans, Cardinals and Faiders have been terrible.

The teams at the top of the list have all at least made the playoffs multiple times with many having won the Super Bowl (KC, PHI, and TAM).

The Broncos have only had 3 first round picks and have done well with all three, in my opinion: Jahdae Barron (he got a red-shirt year as a rookie, essentially), Bo Nix and Patrick Surtain. In the tables below green is good, yellow is average and red is bad.

Only the Texans, Lions and Jags have gotten more value per first round pick 2021-2025 than the Broncos. Four teams have had seven first round picks over the last five drafts with the Giants getting remarkably little from their first round picks. The best individual pick by this metric was Penei Sewell who has a career AV of 64 through five seasons. He’s been named first team AllPro three times. I’d mention Pro-Bowl, but it’s meaningless anymore. With a career AV of 51, PS2 is the Broncos best from the first round over the last 5 drafts.

The 49ers have struck out on all three of their first round picks 2021-2025. Much of this comes from the bust known as Trey Lance, who they traded up for, and who has a career AV of 6 (drAV of 4). Their other two picks, Mykel Williams and Ricky Pearsall have combined for an AV of 12 so far.

The Jets have had 8 first round picks, but they are only getting average value from them relative to the rest of the league.

The Broncos have absolutely crushed it in the second round though, getting RJ Harvey, Marvin Mims, Nik Bonitto and Javonte Williams. This is a huge reversal as the Broncos used to have terrible “luck” with second round picks. They trail only KC in average AV from second round picks 2021-2025.

The Chiefs have the best overall individual pick here with Creed Humphrey. He’s been named first team AllPro twice. The Bronco best is Nik Bonitto with a career AV of 32 so far.

Chicago has had 8 second round picks over these five drafts, but none of them have turned into even Pro-Bowl caliber players. Luther Burden might be the best of the eight, but he was a rookie last season. Teven Jenkins has provided the most value to the team as a three year starter on the OL.

The Broncos are about average with their third round picks. Quinn Meinerz brings the average way up with his AV of 34. The other seven Bronco 3rd round picks have combined for a career AV of 29. Buffalo has the best average in this round mainly due to Spencer Brown, who leads all 3rd rounders 2021-2025 with a career AV of 38. Meinerz 34 is second best.

If you are sensing a pattern here, you’d be correct. The players that AV show as giving the most value to a team in every round so far have been offensive lineman: Sewell, Humphrey and Brown.

The Cardinals, Browns, Faiders and 49ers have had 9 third round picks over the last five drafts, but none of their nine have been great, most are average, but average is good for a 4th round pick. Aidan O’Connell is the best of them with a career AV of 10.

The Broncos have been below average in the 4th round, getting value little from their four picks. Troy Franklin is the Broncos best fourth round pick with a career AV of 8 in two seasons. This is the first round where we find the best overall player so far is NOT an offensive lineman. Amon-Ra St. Brown is the best with an AV of 57. The two-time AllPro has 547 career catches and 44 receiving TDs.

Over the last five drafts, both the Ravens and Patriots have stockpiled 4th round picks with 11. Contrast that with the Bills and the Dolphins who have had only two.

Again the Broncos AV per pick is below average in the fifth round. The best AV from a 5th round pick comes from Luke Wattenburg with a career AV of 12. The Rams have the best individual fifth round pick with Puka Nacua who has a career AV of 39. They also drafted Kyren Williams in the fifth round (career AV of 31). That’s getting two gems on day three.

This was the worst round for the Broncos. The best of the four picks was our rookie punter Jeremy Crawshaw with an AV of 3 for this year.

The Chiefs had three six round picks, but only two played in the NFL. One of those picks has been very good (career AV of 36) and the other has a career AV of 0. Trey Smith is their 6th round pick who has been a gem. The Falcons have gotten almost nothing (1 AV) from their six 6th round picks.

The Broncos have one of the best 7th rounds in the NFL 2021-2025, but most of that comes from Jonathan Cooper, who accounts for 32 of the 40 AV. The rest of the AV for the Broncos from the 7th comes from Alex Forsyth and DeVaughn Vele.

The Broncos got half of their drAV value from the 2021 draft. As of right now, the value from the 2023 draft is one of the worst in the league.

As you would expect most teams get the majority of their value from players drafted in the first round. The Broncos are one of the few teams that has gotten about the same value from the first, second and third rounds. See below:

Keep in mind that this is percentage of value and some teams have gotten much more value from their draft picks over the last five drafts than others as you can see in the first table in this article. The Lions have gotten 419 AV from their draft picks 2021 to 2025 while the Vikings have only gotten 162. The range of curves is interesting. The Broncos and 49ers are relatively flat while the Jags have gotten more than half of their AV from the first round.

But wait, what about pick value? PFR has an average value for every pick slot 1-270. It is much more useful than the old pick value chart which overvalues high first round picks. So I summed the expected AV from every pick for every team 2021-2025 and then compared that to the actual value that they got from their picks over the last five years. The Broncos have been the 6th best at getting more than expected value from their picks. See below.

The Broncos have gotten 309 total drAV from their picks from 2021 to 2025. This is 129 more AV points than expected given the picks that the Broncos have had (only 3 first round picks). The Rams have gotten the most value over expected from their picks, partly because they traded away so many of their first round picks, but also because they have gotten some great value from day three guys like Puka Nacua and Kyren Williams. They are +180. The team that has done the worst at getting value from their picks is the Titans that are -60.

The league as a whole has gotten about 1800 more AV points of value than expected over these five drafts. Also remember that this is a time-dependent analysis. This will change next season as these roughly 1300 players get better or worse.