You are a bit rough on Stafford, Newton and Vick - I think they meet the definition of successful Quarterbacks as much as Luck (or for that matter Matt Ryan).
If Ryan was a #1 pick I would have included him. And I'd definitely agree that Stafford/Newton/Vick are as "successful" as Luck, which is to say that none of them ever won a Super Bowl; i.e. the reward that is supposed to make a terrible season worth it.
I didn't bold Eli and Luck because they were "successful"; I bolded them because they were highly-touted prospects who still brought ZERO championships to the team that drafted them. So even if you are a terrible team and you land the #1 pick in a year with a generational prospect, that prospect might just say, "This team has an incompetent front office and I don't want to play for them." And then instead of getting Eli Manning or John Elway, you get Philip Rivers/LaDainian Tomlinson or Chris Hinton/Ron Solt... and no championships.
Remember, the thing that's supposed to make this all worthwhile is not a "solid, competitive team." Jimmy Johnson and Dave Wannstedt had solid, competitive teams; you don't need to gut your roster and trade away your best players to field a team that can compete for the playoffs every year. No, the goal is
championships, and that goal allegedly justifies tearing down the team to the studs and wasting a season.
And my point is, we have no reason to believe that would work.