The Best NFL Draft Picks Ever (Biggest Steals)

The best NFL draft picks are not the No. 1 overall selections who lived up to the hype. They are the steals, players taken late and dismissed by most teams who went on to careers no scout saw coming. The clearest example, and the one nearly everyone names first, is Tom Brady at pick 199.

Value in the draft is a ratio. A great player taken first overall is a good pick, but the team paid full price. A great player taken in the sixth round is a steal, because the team got elite production for almost nothing and 30-plus other clubs passed on him first. The players below are the biggest bargains in the sport’s history, measured by that gap.

The best value picks in NFL history

The table ranks widely recognized steals by draft position, with the career that made each one legendary.

Player	Position	Draft	Team	Why it was a steal
Tom Brady	QB	199th, 2000	Patriots	Seven Super Bowls after 198 picks passed
Bart Starr	QB	200th, 1956	Packers	Five NFL titles, first two Super Bowl wins
Terrell Davis	RB	196th, 1995	Broncos	2,000-yard season and a Super Bowl MVP
Deacon Jones	DE	186th, 1961	Rams	Hall of Fame pass rusher, popularized the sack
Richard Sherman	CB	154th, 2011	Seahawks	All-Pro corner on a champion defense
Roger Staubach	QB	129th, 1964	Cowboys	Two Super Bowls after Navy service

Every one of these players outperformed his draft slot by a margin most first-round picks never reach. That is the point of the list: it rewards the return on investment, not the raw talent a team thought it was buying.

The Brady pick that towers over the rest

Tom Brady is the standard by which every steal is measured. In 2000 the Patriots spent a sixth-round pick, 199th overall, on a Michigan quarterback scouts saw as slow-footed with an average arm. Six quarterbacks came off the board before him. He went on to win seven Super Bowls and five Super Bowl MVPs, more than any player who has ever lived.

No other pick combines the depth of the fall with the height of the career. Brady did not just outperform pick 199; he outperformed every pick, at any slot, in NFL history. That is why his name has become shorthand for the idea that the draft is a guess, and that even a great scouting department can miss the greatest player in the sport by five full rounds.

Steals happen on defense too

The lists skew toward quarterbacks because the position is the most valuable, but the best defensive steals belong right alongside them. Deacon Jones was a 14th-round pick in 1961 who became one of the most feared pass rushers ever and helped popularize the word “sack.” Richard Sherman was a fifth-round cornerback who anchored a Super Bowl-winning secondary and made multiple All-Pro teams.

Those picks matter because they show the pattern is not about one position. A team that finds elite value late, wherever it comes from, gains an edge that shows up in the standings for years. The skill is spotting the player everyone else undervalued, and doing it at any spot on the field.

Why the Staubach gamble stands out

Roger Staubach is a different kind of steal. The Cowboys knew he was talented but used a low “future” pick on him in 1964 because he owed years of Navy service and could not play right away. Most teams would not tie up a selection on a player years from suiting up. Dallas did, waited until 1969, and got a two-time Super Bowl winner and Hall of Famer.

That patience is a reminder that the best picks are not always about seeing talent others missed. Sometimes they are about accepting a risk others would not, and being right. The reward for that nerve was one of the great bargains in franchise history.

For the flip side of these stories, the high picks who never delivered, see the biggest NFL draft busts. To browse the very top of every draft, our list of the NFL’s No. 1 overall picks shows how often the safest slot still went wrong. And to test how many of these greats you can name from a single clue, try our Guess the NFL Player game.