To win in the NFL today on a consistent basis requires drafting well through all seven rounds, year-in and year-out. In this salary-cap era, finding value after the first round — where any team has a good chance of finding a reliable starter — is often the difference between a deep playoff run and not making it there in the first place.

Our calculations here — which we’ll explain in a minute — prove it. Seattle has done the best job of finding value since 2012, and the Seahawks have made it to the divisional round of the playoffs every year since. They won the Super Bowl after the 2013 season and lost it after the 2014. In 2015 and 2016 they lost divisional round games to Carolina and Atlanta — two other teams that grade out highly based on our method.

In fact, we found that every team to play in the Super Bowl since the 2013 season came out with a positive grade here.

Yes, the Ravens — who ended up at zero (18th out of 32 teams), meaning they’d failed to add value through the draft — and 49ers (30th) played in Super Bowl XLVII after the 2012 season. But based on the way we’re running our calculations, the five years prior to that game would be more significant, and it’s a sure bet that both teams would rank highly.

Their draft failures since 2012 have certainly played out on the field, though: Baltimore and San Francisco have made it to the playoffs once each since.

So let’s explain how we got here.

Methodology

The grades — which are actually numbers, not traditional letters — were created using Pro-Football-Reference.com‘s Approximate Value (AV) metric, which is similar to baseball’s WAR stat in that it seeks to put a numerical value on a player’s overall contribution to the team.

Here’s a primer on the stat.

We started by sorting each draft class by AV, which gave us a ranking of every player in that given class. Here’s what the top-10 looks like for the 2016 draft class:

We then took a player’s AV and compared it to the player who, according to AV, ranked at the spot that player was selected. That gave us a number we’re calling “Expected AV plus-minus.”

It’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds. Let’s draw out the process, using Dak Prescott as an example.

Because Prescott was the 135th pick, we compared his AV to that of Pharoh Cooper, who ranked 135th in the 2016 class with an AV of 1.

With the 135th pick in 2016, Dallas would have been expected to get a player with an AV of 1; instead, they got a player with an AV of 16, giving them an “Expected AV plus-minus” of +15 for the Prescott pick.

(Here’s a spreadsheet with every player’s individual grade)

This process was done for every player drafted since 2012, and then we averaged out each pick for every NFL team and ranked them 1-32.

Here are the results…

So, every time the Seahawks picked in the last five years, they got a player who produced an average AV 2.88 higher than expected based on their draft position. The Browns, meanwhile, got a player who produced an AV 2.75 lower than expected based on their draft position.

Of course, there are several flaws with this method of grading draft picks, which is true for any study of this nature you’ll find out there. Here are the three biggest ones:

(1) AV is not a perfect stat, especially for offensive lineman and specialists, so expect to see some wonky results for those players. A mediocre tackle like Jordan Mills has a high AV simply because he’s played a lot.

(2) AV is a counting stat, so if a player missed some time due to injury or was stuck behind a star veteran on the depth chart, his AV will be lower than a player who remained healthy or got more playing time, even if he is the better player. Joey Bosa’s holdout, for instance, had a huge impact on his AV.

(3) Higher picks are bound to have lower grades. The best grade a first-overall pick can get is a 0, because a team is expected to get the best player in a given class with the top pick. That’s why Andrew Luck received such a poor grade. That and Russell Wilson, the top player in the 2012 draft per AV, is really freaking good.

And one last thing before we look deeper into each team’s grade: Picks are graded based on value — not necessarily how good a player is. If a team gets a solid a role player with a seventh-round pick, they’ll probably get a much better grade than a team that picked a star in the first round.

With all that out of the way, let’s dig into each team’s grade…

Team Rankings

Most valuable draft picks

1. QB Russell Wilson, SEA, 75th in 2012

2. WR T.Y. Hilton, IND, 92nd in 2012

3. LB Bobby Wagner, SEA, 47th in 2012

4. T David Bakhtiari, GB, 109th in 2013

5. RB Alfred Morris, WSH, 173rd in 2012

Least valuable picks

1. RB Trent Richardson, CLE, 3rd in 2012

2. WR Justin Blackmon, JAX, 5th in 2012

3. DE Dion Jordan, MIA, 3rd in 2013

4. DB Morris Claiborne, DAL, 6th in 2012

5. WR A.J. Jenkins, SF, 30th in 2012

Best draft classes

1. 2012 Seattle Seahawks

2. 2013 Green Bay Packers

3. 2014 Oakland Raiders

4. 2013 Chicago Bears

5. 2012 Carolina Panthers

Worst draft classes

1. 2014 Cleveland Browns

2. 2012 San Francisco 49ers

3. 2012 Jacksonville Jaguars

4. 2013 Cleveland Browns

5. 2012 Dallas Cowboys