I disagree with this entirely. A franchise QB is worth a lot of picks... and I mean A LOT. People massively overvalue the impact losing a couple early round picks will have on the long-term prospects of a team that is set at QB. It's marginal compared with the value of a franchise QB. You can wait a year easily, pick valuing isn't that important. If you think a guy has a good chance to be a franchise type QB you trade up for him, the idea that a pick or two difference or getting a guy at 8 vs. 4 is good strategy is silly to me. If Fields for example is a guy you think is a franchise QB... you go to 4 and get him. One only needs to look at the last 5 years of picks to see that we would trade a handful of those Rd 1-3 picks for a top QB in a heartbeat.
The issue some teams have had isn't that they traded too much to draft a QB... it's that they missed on their QB evaluation/development.
Even then... top QBs are almost impossible to find outside the top 10 picks, as we've seen, you can fill a lot of positions well with mid and late round (or even undrafted) players, and reasonable FA signings.
How many franchise QB's in the last 10 years have been picked in the top 5-top 10 and how many QB's have been busts? I listed all QBs picked in top 10 either traded up for or not.
2011--Cam Newton, Jake Locker, Blaine Gabbert--1 hit, 2 busts
2012--Andrew Luck, RG3, Ryan Tannehill--1 hit, 1 bust, 1 took a long time to be good
2013--none in the top 10
2014--Blake Bortles--bust
2015--Jameis Winston, Marcus Mariota--both busts
2016--Jared Goff, Carson Wentz--I'll give them 2 hits as they've been pretty good in stretches but their original teams traded them.
2017--Mitch Tribusky, Patrick Mahomes--1 home run, 1 bust
2018--Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, Josh Rosen--2 hits, 2 busts
2019--Kyler Murray--so far a hit
2020--Joe Burrow, Tua, Herbert--too early to tell long-term on all of them but Herbert has the lead in the clubhouse as being a franchise guy
Hits--8
Busts--9
Average--1(Tannehill)
Too Early to Tell--3
I'd say that Andrew Luck and Patrick Mahomes as the two guys picked in the top 10 in the past 10 years that are true franchise cornerstone QB's. Josh Allen and Kyler Murray are on that track, but I'd need to see more out of them. As you mentioned, teams' evaluations of QB's in recent history have been spotty at best. A lot of the guys available this year you'd have to really rely on the projection of the player on all but really Lawrence. Is that worth gambling multiple future 1st round picks to go up to 4 or 5? I like Fields and Lance, but not at the expense of 2 or 3 first round picks.