I frankly have no issues with how we've approached first round picks, or what we've done with the secondary.
For me, it comes down to understanding your organizational strengths/weaknesses, and most importantly, understanding which positions you can without high end players and which one's you can't. It's not universal of course, but it's not overly hard.
The main questions are around positional value. Was paying $20M/yr to an off-ball linebacker the best use of financial resources? As good as he was last year, there's questions about whether giving $15M/yr to a 30 year old RB is a good use of financial resources. You could question whether paying $13M on a 5th year option to an OLB who doesn't have a strong track record of getting to the QB is a good use of financial resources. Was $11M for Mark Andrews a good use of financial resources?
I think if you looked league wide, off-ball linebackers and RBs are two positions that a lot of teams simply go "cheap" on, because most running games live or die by the Olineman in front of them, not a lot of teams can run the ball well anyway (making off-ball LB play less important), teams run a lot more Nickel/Dime packages than ever, which takes off-ball LBs off the field, and most of them can't cover anyway.
I think even if you look at the EDC era, I think our draft strengths are in the secondary and at TE, meaning I feel better about our ability to draft and develop players in those groups than I would paying for them. I actually think our Dline work has been pretty good, especially in run D, though its hard to find premier interior rushers where we typically draft.
Where we are clearly weak, draft-wise, is on outside pass rushers and interior Oline. We've struggled in that area for a long time now. That, in my opinion, means we should prioritize those positions via FA or via trade markets. The latter we've done some of, the former we've done very little of.
