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This offseason I am taking a position-by-position look at the best NFL draft values of the millennium: In short, which teams received the most bang for their draft-pick buck?
Higher draft picks were not dismissed for this exercise, but I tended to side with the highest-achieving lower selections. Extra weight was also given to longevity and the value those players provided for the teams that drafted them.
Two former first-rounders made my list on the interior defensive line, but there were still enough lower-round value selections to round out the top five.
I wanted to mention two tough omissions left on the cutting-room floor, Jay Ratliff and Calais Campbell, both of whom met the criteria for this exercise — and Campbell, amazingly, is still going strong — but came up just short of the top five.
Drafted: Round 1 (No. 13 overall), 2014.
Only 12 players were selected before Donald’s name was called in the 2014 draft, so it’s understandable if people want to argue the definition of value here. But what clinches it for me: Donald was a truly generational player, arguably among the best defensive standouts in league history.
It has been more than 30 years since a defensive tackle was drafted first overall (Dan Wilkinson, 1994), but Donald almost certainly would have gone first in any hypothetical redraft. After winning the 2014 Defensive Rookie of the Year award, Donald strung together seven straight seasons as a first-team All-Pro and was named Defensive Player of the Year three times in a four-year span (2017, 2018 and 2020). He made the Pro Bowl in all 10 of his NFL seasons. Doesn’t get much better than that.
Long-time stars Khalil Mack and Mike Evans were taken ahead of Donald in 2014. Brilliant as they have been, Donald’s dominance for the vast majority of his career reached a different level.
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Drafted: Round 4 (No. 120 overall), 2010.
One theme that pervades this list is the pre-draft “too small” label. It was attached to the 6-1, 293-pound Atkins, who slid well into Round 4 even after a strong Senior Bowl week and an excellent NFL Scouting Combine workout. In spite of this, Atkins became one of the best interior penetrators in his day, making the league’s All-Decade Team for the 2010s.
After coming off the bench as a rookie, Atkins won a starting job in Year 2 and unleashed a nine-year stretch where he made the Pro Bowl in all but one season (when he suffered a torn ACL), earning first-team All-Pro honors twice in that span. Atkins had three double-digit sack seasons and six years with 10 or more tackles for loss.
Atkins ranks third all time in Bengals history in sacks with 75.5 (behind Eddie Edwards and Carlos Dunlap) — an impressive total for any interior player. He spent his entire career in Cincinnati and will go down as one of the franchise’s best value picks ever.
