The 2012 Seahawks are the best here, and it isn't close. The 10 players they drafted produced a remarkable 263 AV over their first five seasons. The 2004 Chargers are second (since Eli Manning and Philip Rivers were a draft-day swap we’re counting them toward the teams they actually played for), followed by the 2008 Falcons class that included Matt Ryan.

But here's where it gets tricky. Atlanta’s 2008 class produced a ton of value, but, like the 2017 Browns, they were loaded with picks (11 in total, including the 3rd, 21st, 37th and 68th overall). In terms of draft potential the 2008 Falcons had the seventh-best set of picks since 1996, so anything short of producing an outstanding set of players would have been a disappointment.

[Read related: The biggest needs for every AFC team and NFC team.]

A better way to rate how well a team drafts, and the final step of our analysis, is to find the gap between the expected performance of their picks and the actual performance of the players they selected. (ESPN’s Sharon Katz took this approach in her analysis of the 2015 and 2016 drafts.) For example: Matt Ryan produced 73 AV in his first five seasons, while Richard Sherman produced 72 — they were similarly great players. But Ryan had an expected AV of 40 as the third overall selection, while Sherman, taken 154th, was expected to gain just 7. Both were great picks, but Sherman's 65 AV gap makes him a really great pick.

By adding up these gaps for every drafted player since 1996, we can calculate which teams did best and worst against expectations.