
Smith, however, spent three more years with the team and turned in a similarly Hall of Fame-caliber career. This one might catch flak considering Julius Peppers ranks fourth on the all-time sack list after 10 total seasons in Carolina, and the Panthers' recently retired pass rusher could easily fit here. The offensive guys may have gotten the hype, but Smith was absolutely the scariest. 1 pick, destroying opposing lines to the tune of 200 career sacks - a mark that still stands atop the all-time leader board.
#Roger staubach 2019 pro
A 10-time All-Pro and 11-time Pro Bowler with the Bills, he not only lived up to but elevated the expectations of a No. But Smith's production has never been matched. Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed, the other pieces of Buffalo's "K-Gun" squad of the 1990s, also warrant recognition. If you prefer Hall of Fame QB Jim Kelly, that's fine. Off-field questions aside, he's probably the most iconic player in team history. 52 is immortalized in Baltimore, where he captained the Ravens to a pair of Super Bowls, earned two Defensive Player of the Year honors and combined raw emotion with more than 1,300 logged tackles to become one of the greatest to ever play middle linebacker. Baltimore RavensĮd Reed and Jonathan Ogden deserve consideration here, but Lewis is the bigger name - not just because of popular opinion but because of an unprecedented 17-year career. He also helped the Falcons snap an eight-year playoff drought. With 10 total touchdowns for Atlanta from 1989-1993, he was a true threat to change the game whenever he took the field. But Deion is Deion, and even if he won his Super Bowls and made his money elsewhere, he was the face of the Falcons' 1990s defense. In a year or two, it might be impossible to vouch for a guy who played just five years in Atlanta as opposed to Julio Jones, who's already racked up 12,000 career receiving yards and 50-plus touchdowns. More than a decade later, he's still among the game's most reliable, with 1,300 career catches and 17,000 yards to his name. 11 hit his prime circa 2007-2008, when he was an unstoppable force on the Cards' NFC title run. An 11-time Pro Bowler and two-time NFL receptions leader, No. Aeneas Williams had a Hall of Fame career in the secondary, but Fitz has defied time like few others. Our first all-timer hails from the modern era, and there aren't any other Cardinals who come particularly close to matching Fitzgerald's legacy. QB: 9 | LB: 6 | RB: 5 | DE: 3 | WR: 3 | OT: 2 | CB: 2 | TE: 1 | DT: 1Ĭan you guess who made it? How about your favorite team's best pick? Buckle up and find out: From Tom Brady to Roger Staubach, the list is chock-full of star power - and proof that some of the game's biggest legends are born through the draft.īefore diving in, here's a positional breakdown of the 32 all-time top picks: In celebration of the 2020 NFL Draft, we've combed through league history to identify all the best times that gambles did work, compiling the all-time best draft picks for each and every team. And the beauty of the draft is unearthing those hidden gems - or striking what's already perceived as gold. For every draft bust, there are plenty of absolute booms. Teams or players don't work well together.īut sometimes, picks do work.

Production doesn't translate to the pros. At its core, the NFL Draft is nothing more than a glorified crapshoot - a 32-team gamble on some of the best talent from the college football ranks.
