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That wasn't my point. My point was that fans are stupid and want something that's flashy but won't improve the team more than they want management to put in the work (which'll probably take 2-3 years of drafting) to actually build the team properly. And management is too weak to stand up to the fans so they get bullied into drafting some hotshot QB (and probably overpaying him) when they don't have the infrastructure elsewhere on the roster to succeed with him.

The GM knows that if they trade down the #1 pick and that's a QB who goes on to a better team that just needed a QB, absolutely light things up, they'll get blamed for missing out on him. Despite the fact that deep down inside they know that QB wouldn't have put up the same numbers on their roster without the surrounding talent.

Like you, I've watched a team (Da Bears) ruin QB careers for decades, by wasting high draft capital on a position that they don't have the surrounding talent to support.

I would trade down and draft linemen until I felt I had good lines.  Then I'd get LBs and safeties, and then maybe take a shot at a QB.  But I'd probably be fired as GM and the FNG would reap the rewards.

To an extent I agree with this and I chuckled at the "FNG" comment, but when talking about a team bad enough to have one of the first few picks in the draft I don't know that I'd focus on linemen or any other specific spot, I'd just increase picks by trading down and then take whoever I thought was the best available guy when my turn came almost without regard to position because if my team is THAT bad, I probably need the guy no matter where he plays.  IMHO, there is no such thing as an absolute "can't miss" at ANY position because even to the extent that you can analyze on-field performance well enough to figure out how much is the guy being good and how much is his surrounding cast, you still have the problem of potential off-field issues and injuries. 

I'm not making the case that QBs aren't that important. It's the most important position in the sport IMHO.

However I think a good QB with a poor surrounding cast is not going to be able to magically transform team performance, and will look like a much worse QB due to that surrounding cast. An average QB with an excellent surrounding cast will look like a much better QB than they really are.

The biggest point is that you have to build the team first to set any QB up for success. Focusing on the QB when the other pieces aren't in place won't get you there.

The only way people will stop taking QBs high is if they are less important, or if there’s a real belief that being thrown into bad spots keeps damaging them beyond repair and capping success. And we’ve not reached that point.

I have. I spend less time looking at it in the pros, but I've watched multiple Elite 11 QBs (Danny Etling, Austin Appleby) get squandered because they were running for their lives constantly behind a porous O-line. I've watched as a coach's preferred QB (Elijah Sindelar) couldn't stay on the field ahead of David Blough because Blough was mobile enough to survive behind a porous O-line.

I'm sure someone who watches the NFL more closely can point out the areas where a QB was drafted too high, on a bad team who couldn't block for him, forced to start too early (because of the draft capital invested in him), and fell off the map because they were damaged beyond repair.