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.
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.
Drafted: Round 2 (No. 37 overall), 2016.
Jones is one of the game's best interior wreckers, but he didn’t truly break out until Year 3, kicking off a seven-year span (that’s still current) that's seen Jones earn six Pro Bowl nods and three first-team All-Pro honors. He’s the league’s highest-paid interior defensive lineman by a pretty fair margin entering his age-31 season, and Jones’ ability to play up and down the line and impact the game in myriad ways is part of what makes him so special.
With three Super Bowl rings and various individual accolades, Jones very much appears to be on a Hall of Fame trajectory, and it doesn’t hurt that he has come up huge in some of the Chiefs’ biggest playoff games. That the Chiefs traded down and out of Round 1 and still were able to draft him makes his value to the team even greater.
Drafted: Round 1 (No. 31 overall), 2011.
The 2011 draft might go down as one of the great defensive classes in recent memory, featuring the likes of J.J. Watt, Von Miller, Patrick Peterson and many others, and the first round was littered with some fantastic talents on offense, too. But it’s hard not to argue that Heyward should have gone much, much higher than 31st overall, and he’s still operating at an extremely high level at age 36.
Five interior defensive linemen were drafted before Heyward, who took a little while to exert his dominance. But once he did, there have been few comparable defensive linemen on his plateau. After missing more than half the 2016 season with hamstring and pectoral injuries, he bounced back in 2017 by being named first-team All-Pro -- the first of his four placements on that team.
He was again slowed by a groin injury in 2023, and Heyward’s career appeared to be on the downslope. But he came back as good as ever in 2024, racking up eight sacks and a stunning 11 batted passes. His longevity and production are major hallmarks in what has been a brilliant career so far.
Drafted: Round 5 (No. 134 overall), 2006.
The least-heralded player on this list, Williams’ accomplishments seem to overlooked outside of Buffalo these days. The Bills were in the midst of a long playoff drought during most of Williams’ career, but he helped usher them back into the postseason in 2017, becoming a beloved fan favorite.
Williams was named to six Pro Bowls in his 13-year career. His statistics were not gaudy compared to some of the other names on this list, but Williams was considered the heart and soul of Buffalo’s defense for more than a decade, playing multiple spots along the line.
Pegged as neither quick nor strong enough for the NFL entering the 2006 draft, Williams was at least the 10th defensive tackle drafted (depending on how you define that position) and was the second DT drafted by the Bills that year. First-rounder John McCargo had only one start and 2.5 sacks in a nondescript career, but Williams became a rock in the middle of the Bills defense for more than a decade, even rushing for a TD in the 2017 regular-season finale to help vault them back into the playoffs for the first time since 1999.
