Top draft pick to Hall of Fame? Not in the '90s

Interesting note courtesy of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s web site, listing the 13 members of the Hall who were first overall draft picks. Did you think that number would be higher? Let’s take a closer look.

From 1960-1989, the first overall pick produced exactly three Hall of Famers per decade. That meant that the teams picking first overall in those 30 years had a 30 percent chance of landing a future Hall of Famer. Any GM would take those odds, right?

It’s the dreaded ‘90s that water down the numbers. As of now, there are zero top picks from the ‘90s in Canton. That will change as soon as Peyton Manning (1998) becomes eligible. And eventually, 1997 top pick Orlando Pace might give the ‘90s two No. 1 Hall of Famers. After that, however, none of the remaining eight top picks is even close to consideration.

There’s still plenty of history to be written for the top picks of the 2000s, but the first 10 years of this century don’t look much better than the ‘90s in terms of first overall picks. Two Super Bowl MVPs for Eli Manning (2004) put him in the mix. The jury is still way out there on Michael Vick, Mario Williams and Matt Stafford, but that’s about it.

Interestingly, while there have been 13 No. 1 picks to reach the Hall, a total of 12 Hall of Famers were No. 2 overall picks. The most recent was Marshall Faulk (1994) and there are two more that have a decent shot (Julius Peppers, 2002, and Calvin Johnson, 2007).

Look, picking at the top of the draft by no means guarantees you a Hall of Fame player. The problem is not missing out on a superstar; it’s passing on a superstar in favor of a bust. And when you look at this list of the top two picks since 1990, you find more busts than winners. Forget about Hall of Fame… Pro Bowl would be nice.

Year	No. 1 Pick	No. 2 Pick
1990	Jeff George	Blair Thomas
1991	Russell Maryland	Eric Turner
1992	Steve Emtman	Quentin Coryatt
1993	Drew Bledsoe	Rick Mirer
1994	Dan Wilkinson	Marshall Faulk
1995	Ki-Jana Carter	Tony Boselli
1996	Keyshwn Johnson	Kevin Hardy
1997	Orlando Pace	Darrell Russell
1998	Peyton Manning	Ryan Leaf
1999	Tim Couch	Donovan McNabb
2000	Courtney Brown	LaVar Arrington
2001	Michael Vick	Leonard Davis
2002	David Carr	Julius Peppers
2003	Carson Palmer	Charles Rogers
2004	Eli Manning	Robert Gallery
2005	Alex Smith	Ronnie Brown
2006	Mario Williams	Reggie Bush
2007	JaMarcus Russell	Calvin Johnson
2008	Jake Long	Chris Long
2009	Matt Stafford	Jason Smith
2010	Sam Bradford	Ndamukong Suh
2011	Cam Newton	Von Miller