What position has been John Elway’s weakness in the draft?

The Afternoon Drive launched into an interesting conversation today about John Elway’s drafting history.

Their point was essentially, “do you trust Elway to get a starting tackle in a poor tackle class, given his history drafting tackles?” Which led to the main question that caught my attention: what position has Elway been the weakest at drafting?

Let’s take a look at the Broncos draft classes since Elway has been in the Front Office.

Eric and Les’ opinion was that Elway’s weakest positions have been QB and OT.

At QB you have Zac Dysert and Brock Osweiler who didn’t pan out, Paxton Lynch who has yet to pan out (but it’s still wayyy to early to make a judgement on this pick), and Trevor Siemian who was a steal in the 7th round.

Given this, I disagree that he has been bad at drafting QBs. The only bad miss was Osweiler and he played a key role in getting us a Super Bowl, so he wasn’t a complete bust. Paxton Lynch is on track with the plan since he was drafted as he was always a 1-2 year project. Add in the fact that Elway got a QB who won the job and started for the team last year in the 7th round, and his track record with QBs looks pretty decent, actually.

Now tackles are a different story. Out of Orlando Franklin, Vinston Painter, Michael Schofield, and Ty Sambrailo, Franklin was the only one who panned out and he ended up moving to guard (as did Schofield last year).

It is important to note that drafting is only 30-50% of the equation when it comes to player success. As Elway says nearly every year around this time, “we don’t draft All-Pros, we develop All-Pros.” So Elway does not bear all the blame for picks not panning out as a large portion of it falls on the coaches to develop them.

So what do you think Broncos Country? Is Tackle Elway’s biggest position weakness in drafts so far? What would you say his strongest position is (don’t forget UDFAs too)?

Let’s discuss!