In general, draft picks aren't overvalued. Their value is the production you can receive for the low, low cost of a rookie contract. Every draft pick you hit on, you're getting production for peanuts. Which enables you to allocate more resources elsewhere (ideally to stud players you've previously drafted and developed who know your system and thrive in it).
Draft picks are only overvalued when the team making them is too terrible at drafting (and developing) to turn the pick into a good player. But, then, teams who can't draft or develop are unlikely to have drafted a ton of guys previously who turned out to be stars who are commanding big money now anyway, so it's not like that team should need to count on rookie contracts balancing out all their star players' huge deals. Those kinds of teams, if they're in money trouble, it's only because they subscribe to the view of the original poster here, which says that veterans are more valuable than rookies, so they probably have a team built on overpaid vets.
This kind of thinking, thinking the draft and rookies are overvalued, is basically what led to Jon Gruden tanking the Bucs in his last head coaching stint. The Raiders trading a 3rd rounder to check out Martavis Bryant for a few months before cutting him tells me Gruden probably hasn't learned anything.
If you draft well and develop the guys you draft, you're gonna accumulate players who need to be paid real money beginning with their second contracts. Which means you need to continue to draft well to make that financially feasible so you have an infusion of fresh blood playing for peanuts and freeing up more money for the established guys.
If you don't draft well, you won't accumulate stars who need to be paid, so rookie contracts might hold less value. And you won't be picking the right players anyway, so the picks hold less value in your hand. Though, theoretically, the worse you are at drafting, the more you need your picks to be as high as possible to increase the odds of you accidentally lucking into picking a good player.
But whatever.
Ideally, draft picks can give you young stars playing for peanuts. Even if you don't get a huge shooting star out of the pick, the hope is you turn a bunch of picks into Anthony Hitchens types. Guys who aren't sexy stars but they're super solid backups and even nice starters who, by the time their rookie deal is up, might look like a real reliable stud. Draft picks are valuable because of guys like Hitchens. At the end of the day, you want to be the kind of team who has a Hitchens type playing for you for peanuts. Instead of being the team who is paying legit starter money to have that Hitchens-caliber guy playing for you. The team who gets that production without paying serious money for it has a huge advantage.
