I think cutting between both of you is how the consensus is so often wrong. Teams can go along with the consensus and not make waves, avoiding criticism in the moment.
The talking heads are generally positive anytime a pick is made that is within the general consensus. The fanbase of a team cheers if their team picks who they're slotted to.
5 years later, they're made fun of, but it doesn't matter. In the moment, they did the "wise" thing of going along with the consensus.
What it comes down to is the randomness of the whole thing. Truly great players have garbage careers due to all sorts of reasons - shitty position coach, horrible marriage, an ankle that never heals, poor usage, wrong fit, coach turnover, etc.
It's akin to why I don't really make predictions on games played by 20 year olds....there's no rhyme or reason. Teams have to draft players and develop their futures, but it's a crapshoot.
The only team I can think of that's routinely gone against the consensus by design is the Raiders. Their obsession with 40 times is childish. And in 17 years, they've had 1 winning season.
I play fantasy football. It's easy to try to categorize decisions as "right" or "wrong" when those decisions lead to "wins" or "losses" week to week.
But that's stupid. There is SO much randomness in the actual result of what happens on the field, that an individual decision and that week's result are barely correlated.
The key is to try to have good process. It's a question of "what's most likely to happen", not "what will happen"? The results over a season, if you have good process, will usually average out to be good. But sometimes the randomness just overwhelms even good process.
Generally the Patriots have had good process. If they had drafted Brady in the first round because you thought he'd be the eventual GOAT, everyone would have looked at the end result 20 years later and said "OMG what a great decision", but it would have been TERRIBLE process, both because if you're constantly wagering that you're 6th-round "hunch" is going to pay off like a first-rounder, you're probably making a lot of other terrible decisions, but also because if you waste that 1st-round pick on a QB that you could have "reached" for in the 4th or 5th round, the opportunity cost of that draft decision is too high.
Heck, for most teams who get the #1 overall pick, and pick QB, it's terrible process. If you're the 32nd-best team in the NFL, your problems are WAY bigger than the QB spot. You probably don't have an OL that can block for that QB, and can't open holes in the running game to take pressure off that QB. You probably have a terrible defense that will put that QB into "drop back and chuck it" mode early in every game because you're constantly playing catch-up. So you'll put that QB behind a bad OL in obvious passing downs all year, and then suddenly nobody understands why the QB is shellshocked and not developing. Uhh, it's freakin' obvious why.
Yes, it's REALLY hard to go to, and win, the Super Bowl without an elite QB. But an elite QB on a bad team won't play like an elite QB, so if you're that bad it's much better to stick with a pedestrian QB until you've upgraded the team around the QB to at least be good. An elite QB can then put you over the hump.
