Read one profile of an offensive lineman projected to go in the top ten of the draft and you’ve read them all. You’ll hear that the player is “one of the safest picks in the draft,” a future Pro Bowler, and someone “you can pencil into your starting lineup for the next decade and forget about.”

We know that quarterbacks are tough to project coming out of college: it’s the most challenging position to evaluate, so we’re told, and quarterback production is so dependent on things like system and teammates. Wide receivers are notoriously risky, too, while running backs have become devalued in recent years.

So the default safe offensive pick high in the draft is at tackle. But that hasn’t been working out so well in recent years. Not only have there been a number of underachievers, but top picks have produced some of the league’s worst starting linemen.

• In 2014, Greg Robinson was the second pick in the draft. The Rams tackle rated as one of the worst offensive tackles last season according to Pro Football Focus.

• The sixth pick last year was Jake Matthews, and the Atlanta linemen had the distinction of being PFF’s lowest-rated offensive tackle of 2014.

• Taylor Lewan was the 11th pick to the Titans. He began the season on the bench, first starting in week 6 against the Jaguars. Lewan started for six games, but missed the remainder of the season with an ankle injury.

• In 2013, offensive tackles went in three of the first four picks! Eric Fisher was the first overall pick in the draft but has been a disastrous pick. Fisher was terrible at right tackle as a rookie, and no better as a left tackle last season. The Chiefs have been successful over this time period, limiting the media blowback, but the pick has been horrendous by first overall selection standards.

• The second pick in ’13 was Luke Joeckel, who has been just as bad, with the added bonus of having missed most of his rookie year due to injury. Like Fisher, the media hasn’t focused on how bad of a pick this had been but for the opposite reason: Jacksonville has been so unsuccessful that Joeckel’s failures are lost in the haystack.

• The fourth pick in that draft was Lane Johnson, and that’s a pick that’s mostly worked out for the Eagles. He played decently enough as a rookie and was an above-average player last year (after missing the first four games of the season due to suspension).

• After Johnson, a pair of guards were drafted in the top ten. Guards are never highly drafted, but these two were such safe blue-chippers that they went in the top ten anyway! As it turns out, neither the Chance Warmack or Jonathan Cooper picks has worked out. Warmack has been a nondescript guard (who could have guessed?!) on a bad team, while Cooper has been limited to just 189 snaps in two years. Arizona has clearly soured on Cooper, one of the few setbacks of the fabulous Arians/Keim regime.

• San Diego took D.J. Fluker with the 11th pick in the 2013 draft. Some thought Fluker would be a guard in the pros, and after two years at tackle in the pros, it appears as though that’s where he’ll play in 2015. That’s a pretty good hint as to how he played at tackle.

• In 2012, Matt Kalil was the 4th overall pick. The Vikings left tackle was disastrous last season, allowing a league-high 12 sacks and ranking as the fourth worst offensive tackle according to Pro Football Focus. Kalil played well as a rookie but has regressed since; his future is uncertain, but based on his play last season, the only reason he’s going to be on an NFL roster in 2015 is because he was the 4th overall pick in the 2012 draft.

• In 2011, Kalil’s USC teammate, Tyron Smith, was the only tackle to go high in the draft. Smith, of course, has been a star for the Cowboys, and was a first-team All-Pro for the first time in his career in 2014.

• In 2010, it was Trent Williams (4th), Russell Okung (6th), and Anthony Davis (11th) going at the top of the draft. All three have had their good years, and Williams has lived up to his pre-draft hype. Okung and Davis are solid players, but I’m not sure either have quite lived up to expectations. Still, compared to the recent tackles taken at the top of the draft, Okung and Davis look like stars.

• The 2009 draft produced another disaster. St. Louis selected Jason Smith with the second overall pick, and he is one of the biggest busts in draft history. With the sixth selection, Cincinnati drafted Andre Smith, who was actually one of the “riskier” tackles drafted in recent memory. Smith struggled with weight issues, but he’s turned out to be a very good pro. Two picks later, the Jaguars selected Eugene Monroe. Monroe’s career has been up-and-down, but Jacksonville certainly wasn’t thrilled with the pick: the Jaguars dealt Monroe to Baltimore in 2013 for a fourth and a fifth round pick. After an initial good performance with the Ravens, Monroe was one of the league’s poorer offensive tackles in 2014.

One of the earlier posts at Football Perspective was titled: Investing heavily in a Left Tackle is a luxury bad teams can not afford. Upon further review, I believe even more strongly in that analysis because drafting tackles appears to be pretty risky on top of everything else.

Of course, the anecdotes above are just some examples, and there’s no control group: i.e., I didn’t go through that same process for other positions. But I did look at all draft picks from 1990 to 2009 a couple of years ago. At the time, offensive linemen looked somewhat safe, although I’m skeptical that such analysis would hold up if we included data from the last five years.

Perhaps the best question is why aren’t offensive tackles easier to project? But whatever the answer to that question is, there’s no doubt that taking an offensive lineman at the top of the draft is a lot riskier than most teams think it is.