It's a "fact" that teams drafting at the end of each round are at a drafting disadvantage compared to teams that draft earlier. It's literally how the system is designed to work.
Nobody has said we're drafting "lesser prospects" with our picks. You're making that up out of thin air. The point is that you're in a worse draft POSITION by picking 32nd than you are if you pick 23rd. That's objectively true.
Anyone who argues otherwise is a complete, utter moron.
Well, the draft being organized like a buffet line does offer an advantage to those who are selecting earlier. There's more to choose from, obviously.
However, the advantage offered by selecting earlier is only
realized if the person doing the selecting chooses wisely and well. That doesn't always happen.
This is why I consistently argue against the notion that the #10 spot is worth more than the #30 spot because the prospects selected at #10 become superior NFL players. They don't always.
The only value in selecting earlier is the better
opportunity to (potentially) select a "better" prospect.
What makes a prospect "better" in the eyes of the choosers - "better" in the sense that they're
projected to be more likely to develop into superior NFL players? It's not entirely objective. It consists of a few things that can be directly measured and tested, a few other things that are quantified (though often out of context), personal impressions, and (mostly) second-hand or third-hand "eyeball tests" -- all of which "information" is then filtered through the "wisdom", the ego and/or insecurities of the decision-maker.
Frankly, I'm astonished that early first-round picks turn out well as often as they do.
So, the
disadvantage for BB picking at #32 versus picking at #1 is that there are 31 fewer prospects to choose from. However, there are typically about 3,000 draft-eligible prospects every year - roughly 300 of which may be considered "draft-worthy" by a consensus of 3rd-party observers and the teams themselves. So, when BB picks at #32, he still has about 90% of those to choose from. Given that at least a few of the 10% who are already off the board in any given draft are going to bust (or turn out to be no "better" at playing in the NFL than several prospects who were selected later), BB may still have 92% or more of the "best" prospects to choose from.
While it's true that the "10% advantage" that the team picking at #1 has over the team picking at #32
appears to compound with each successive round, it probably doesn't in a literal sense - because the difference in the
likelihood that a prospect picked early in a given round will become a better player than a prospect picked at the end of that same round also declines with each successive round.
So, yes, there is an advantage to having the
opportunity to select earlier rather than later, and that advantage is quantifiable to some degree, but, in practice, it may not be as large as the numbers would seem to suggest. If it was, the Jete, the Bills, the Browns, and the Lions might all have won at least one championship over the past couple decades.