Your list is a little deceptive because while plenty of good WR come out of the later portions of the draft, there’s a huge amount of WR taken every year outside of round 1 so it’s just a numbers game. The chances of finding that one guy out of 30 per year is pretty minimal.
As it is, elite WR’s almost never win anything without high end QB play and even then they can be effectively gameplanned out by a worthy opponent (which you’re more often than not going to run into in the playoffs). Mike Evans, Antonio Brown and Tyreek Hill only won with Mahomes/Brady and every other elite WR other than Kupp (who had near elite Stafford) I can think of in the recent past has failed to carry a team to victory. Julio Jones probably came the closest but his presence alone couldn’t close out SB51.
Having an elite WR is great for elevating your offense but - as we saw for years with Hopkins, Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson etc or last year with Chase and Jefferson - that guy isn’t going to get you anywhere unless you have high end QB play.
There hasn’t been a single team to get to or win a Super Bowl on the basis of an elite WR carrying a mediocre QB.
Drafting Harrison, Odunze, Nabers in the first half of round 1 (at 3 or lower via trade) would be a massive waste of a pick.
You know you're making the same argument I did in the post you responded to? I mean, it's right there in my first two sentences when I wrote "What did Fitz ever win alone?" I was arguing against taking MHJ at #3.
That said, if the only measure of success is championship or bust, Mahomes and Brady are going to skew a lot of recent memories and skew how teams should be built. There is only one Brady and there is only one Mahomes. The model those franchises could use to build teams is so, so much different than what 30 other NFL teams can use because they don't have those guys under center (and even then, they had arguably the #1 and #2 tight ends of all time)
But nearly every team that ends up in the Elite 8 of the NFL playoffs in recent years have top wide receivers, and in the case of Buffalo, Miami, Philly, SF, Cincy, Detroit none of their QB's really made huge strides until they had elite receivers to work with. Dallas has had elite receivers almost throughout Dak's career Then you have young teams that have done very well in scouting and drafting receivers like Houston, and then there's Green Bay who just kept taking bites at the apple until they found guys that could play.
The Pats on the other hand, and teams like the Jags and Giants, have spent very little draft capital on receivers, and the results show. In the last 4 drafts, the Jaguars have taken 1 wide receiver before the 5th round (Shenault in the 2nd), the Giants have taken 4 WR's total in the last 7 drafts (Hyatt in the 3rd, Robinson in the 2nd and Toney in the 1st included). The Pats have taken 6 WR's in the last 7 drafts, and the only 2 they've taken before the 6th round were Thornton and Harry. To put this in perspective, the Packers knowing they were about to start a young QB, have taken 7 wide receivers in the last 3 drafts (2nd, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th rounder included) and they still managed to take tight ends in the 2nd and 3rd round last year. The Pats haven't even drafted a tight end since the disaster in 2020 with Asiasi/Keene.
Obviously, I know the caveats, teams have different needs, the Pats have tried to improve via trades and free agency, etc. But these positions matter, especially when you don't have Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes, and IMO, you have to take shots at them, regularly. The miss rate on every position, not just WR, is high, but it's even harder to hit when you don't try. There's a huge number of every position taken in every draft, it's not just a numbers game, it's a commitment to trying and scouting the right guys.
