What if Broncos had listened to Mike Mayock in the last eight drafts?

Blogging the Boys had an interesting post where they redrafted based on Mike Mayock’s mock drafts over the past eight years and the results were not very kind to the new Oakland Raiders general manager, Mike Mayock.

This made me wonder how he would stack up against John Elway and the Denver Broncos draft record over the last eight years and unlike the Dallas Cowboys situation, the results were predictably a mixed bag for Elway’s draft record in the first round.

In eight seasons, Elway drafted just one all-pro player with his first overall pick. One could argue that Bradley Chubb is well on his way to joining Von Miller in that exclusive club, but in between those two picks was disappointment after disappointment.

The only two players one could legitimately make an argument for towards being NFL starter caliber players are Derek Wolfe and Bradley Roby. The rest have been or are well on their way to being first round busts.

If you compare Elway’s first-round draft record to Mike Mayock’s, you end up coming away feeling like maybe the Broncos end up with slightly better talent. It’s no landslide victory for Mayock, however, so don’t get too worked up over these results.

Instead of Miller being paired with Wolfe, you’d have him paired with Michael Brockers. From there, you get four iffy picks of outright busts and oft-injured talent before you get to two solid offensive line picks in Ryan Ramczyk and Quenton Nelson.

Even so, Mayock’s draft picks have combined for 341 starts to Elway’s 375. And if you dial it down to where you might take Mayock’s pick over Elway’s it comes down to Ramczyk over Garett Bolles and Karl Joseph over Paxton Lynch.

It’s almost as if John Elway and Mike Mayock are cut from the same mold as General Managers. And no, that isn’t necessarily a good thing...