Ranking The 10 Greatest NFL Draft 1st Rounds of All-Time
By Erik Lambert
#8: 2007
Total draft slots: 32
Pro Bowlers: 17
One round produced 17 players who would reach a Pro Bowl. Not a single one of them was a quarterback. Think about that for a second. It seems almost sacrilege for a great class to be on this list that doesn’t have at least one QB involved. Not 2007, the year forever remembered as the Jamarcus Russell draft. The only way to make up for that debacle was for the rest of the 1st round to pick up the slack and boy did it with a variety of different future stars.
The left tackles were abundant in this group. Joe Thomas is the standard by which others are measured. A model of consistency his entire career. He will be first ballot Hall of Fame when he’s finished. Joe Staley is no slouch either. Joining them was the freakish specimen known as “Megatron” in Calvin Johnson and of course “Beast Mode” Marshawn Lynch. Indeed the nicknames were at their peak in this class with Darrelle Revis bringing “Revis Island” to the corner position. That doesn’t even include Patrick Willis, one of the great inside linebackers of the past decade.