I think what you've really done here is point out that Pro-Football Reference's Approximate Value is flawed.

There is no reason that year after year guys picked later in the draft should be better than guys picked earlier, so in my opinion this little statistic just points out that AV is unable to completely correct for a player being on a better team.

Hobby, girlfriend, www.spankwire.com. Something dude..........seriously.

If you compare the players drafted in rounds 28 and 29 most fans are going to say that they are as good as or better than those drafted at 15. So it is not just a problem with AV.

If we are going to go down that road, then we will end up saying: "Pioli deserves a break for drafting Tyson Jackson last year. Jackson is really a much better player than what his on the field performance showed. His performance was only disappointing because he was surrounded by talent left over from Carl." I don't think anyone wants to open that can of worms.

Anecdotal.

Well people open that can all the time, so why not?

Really though, consider what you're saying. By what mechanism are players picked later in the draft better than players picked at 15? It doesn't make any kind of sense other than AV not being able to entirely separate a players performance from that of his team... And we shouldn't be so surprised, it's a team game after all.