The NFL Draft is easily the second-most important event on the league’s annual calendar, with most teams that privately know they won’t be close to winning the Super Bowl prepping for the three-day event. Yet, there are still plenty of teams who don’t take an active role in the draft. In each of the last 10 NFL Drafts, including this year’s edition, at least one franchise hasn’t selected or isn’t slated to pick a player in the top 50 positions. They’ve traded away assets to win now or never recovered future pieces from past deals.
How’d those teams fare dating back to 2014? We’ll take a look here if the risk of not taking the cream-of-the-crop prospects paid off. Spoiler: for some it did and for others, it was a colossal failure. Two teams appear on the countdown twice, while six others followed suit with one of these weird distinctions, starting with how the Bay Area’s team is preparing for a long wait to add to its roster.
