The National Football League Draft is an annual event in which the National Football League (NFL) teams select eligible college football players and it is their most common source of player recruitment. The basic design of the draft is that each team is given a position in the drafting order in reverse order relative its record in the previous year—the last place gets positioned first. With this position, the team can either select a player or trade their position to another team for other positions, a player, or players, or any combination thereof. After each team had utilized its position in the drafting order, whether by trading it or selecting a player, a round would be complete. Certain aspects of the draft, including team positioning and the number of rounds in the draft, have seen revisions since its first creation in 1936, but the fundamental methodology has remained the same. The original rationale in creating the draft was to increase the competitive parity between the teams as the worst team would, idealistically, have chosen the best player available.

Ryan David Leaf (born May 15, 1976) is a former American football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for four seasons. He played for the San Diego Chargers and the Dallas Cowboys between 1998 and 2001, and also spent time with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Seattle Seahawks.

Leaf had a successful college career at Washington State University, where he was a finalist for the Heisman Trophy after his junior year. He was selected as the second overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft, but his career was short and interrupted by injuries. An episode of NFL Top 10 ranked him as the No. 1 "draft bust" in NFL history.

After having led his high school, Charles M. Russell High School, to the 1992 Montana state title, Leaf played college football at Washington State University. He played in 32 games for the Cougars, starting 24 of them. In his junior year, he averaged 330.6 yards passing per game and threw for a then Pac-10 conference record 33 touchdowns. He also helped the Cougars defeat the Washington Huskies 41-35 for the first time in Husky Stadium since 1985. Leaf ended the school's 67-year Rose Bowl drought and helped bring the Cougars their first Pac-10 championship in school history. Despite a strong early showing by Leaf in the Rose Bowl, the Cougars were defeated 21-16 by the eventual national champion Michigan Wolverines. In 2011, Leaf published a memoir of this season, entitled 596 Switch.^{[citation needed]}

Emmitt James Smith, III (born May 15, 1969) is a retired American football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) for fifteen seasons during the 1990s and 2000s. Smith played college football for the University of Florida, where he was an All-American. A first-round pick in the 1990 NFL Draft, he played professionally for the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals of the NFL.

During his long professional career, he became the NFL's all-time rushing leader, breaking the record formerly held by Walter Payton, and played for three Super Bowl-winning Dallas Cowboys teams. Smith is the only running back to ever win a Super Bowl championship, the NFL Most Valuable Player award, the NFL rushing crown, and the Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award all in the same season (1993). He is also one of only four running backs to lead the NFL in rushing three or more consecutive seasons, joining Steve Van Buren, Jim Brown and Earl Campbell. Smith led the league in rushing and won the Super Bowl in the same year three times (1992, 1993, and 1995) when to that point it had never been done. Smith is also one of only two non-kickers in NFL history to score more than 1,000 career points (the other being Jerry Rice). Smith was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010, and is the first player from the 1990 NFL Draft to be inducted.

Aaron Charles Rodgers (born December 2, 1983) is an American football quarterback for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He was selected in the first round (24th overall) of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Packers. Rodgers played college football at the University of California, Berkeley, where he set several California Golden Bears records, including lowest interception rate at 1.43%.

Professionally, Rodgers is the NFL's all-time career leader in passer rating during both the regular season with a rating of 104.1, and the post-season with a rating of 105.5 – among passers with at least 1,500 and 150 pass attempts respectively. He also holds the league's lowest career pass interception percentage for quarterbacks during the regular season with a percentage of 1.80%, and the single season passer rating record of 122.5. Rodgers led the Green Bay Packers to win Super Bowl XLV and was named Super Bowl MVP. As a result, he was named Associated Press Athlete of the Year in 2011.

Benjamin Todd "Ben" Roethlisberger (pronounced /ˈrɒθlɨsbɜrɡər/; born March 2, 1982), nicknamed Big Ben, is an American football quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Steelers in the first round (11th overall) in the 2004 NFL Draft. He played college football at Miami University.

Roethlisberger earned the AP NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year Award in 2004 and his first Pro Bowl selection in 2007. He became the youngest Super Bowl-winning quarterback in NFL history, helping lead the Steelers, in his second professional season, to a 21–10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL at the age of 23. Roethlisberger led the Steelers to a second Super Bowl title in four seasons as they defeated the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII, 27–23, after completing a game-winning touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes in the final 35 seconds.

Roethlisberger has been one of the most efficient passers in NFL history. He currently ranks 10th all-time in NFL passer rating (92.9), 5th in yards per attempt (8.06), and 11th in completion percentage (63.24%) among quarterbacks with a minimum of 1,500 career attempts. He has the fourth highest career winning percentage (.710) as a starter in the regular season among quarterbacks with a minimum of 100 starts.