Georgia owned the 2022 NFL draft - Does that mean its defenders will be stars? Ranking the most valuable college draft classes ever

If you paid attention to the 2022 NFL draft, you might have noticed teams showed a particular interest in the defenders from the Georgia Bulldogs.

No. 1 overall pick Travon Walker started the run, and by the time Thursday's first round was over, five members of college football's top scoring defense had their names called. It was the first time in NFL history that one college defense had sent five first-rounders to the league in a single draft.

By the end of the weekend, Georgia had set another record. Using Chase Stuart's draft value chart, which uses historical performance to measure the value of each individual pick, NFL teams had used more draft capital on Georgia's defense than any other offense or defense in a single draft since the 1970 merger. It was a special ending for a special defense.

Figuring this out also got me thinking about other mega-classes from years past. On paper, Georgia's five first-round picks and seven picks in the top 102 have special qualities, but that was also probably true for super-offenses and super-defenses from other years. How often did those college stars deliver on their pre-draft promise? Were they more likely to succeed than typical draft picks?

With that in mind, I calculated the draft capital spent on each offensive and defensive draft class by school going back through 1970, then broke down the 15 most expensive classes. Several of them are still a work in progress, but we have enough of a sample to get insight into whether they succeed more or less often than typical draftees.

I'll report my findings after running through those 15 programs, and I'll be honest: I was surprised by what I found!

Keep in mind that the year listed for these schools is the year of the draft where