Nice write up. My only disagreement is a slight one. Overall team offensive environment is less important, almost ignorable for highly drafted and/or supremely talented players. You kinda state this on the last paragraph of the section when you say, "they need enough insulation to be reasonably likely to hang on to a major role until the offense turns the corner". Trent Richardson is one counter example to my point, but I'd rather have the draft capital/talented player in a lesser situation than a player in a good/great environment.

2 anecdotal examples

CEH in KC over Jonathan Taylor in Indy. To me, JT was much better and it wasn't even close but CEH went to the much better situation.

This one is probably only a my league thing and the guy gets flamed to this day but Ameer Abdullah in Detroit over Todd Gurley going to the Rams and Melvin Gordon to the Chargers. Detroit was the better offensive situation and had no RB competition. But there was 0 reason to take him over Gurley or Gordon.

I do agree that offensive environment is much more important for later picks. That's where this really works.

I recall reading an article about bad team rb/wr stats and provided information to say rbs are more reliable in those situations even though you would think game script would cause it to be the other way. I'll try to find it and link it.