Your criteria for 'top tier' is so vague that it could be anything.
I'd say that there's a certainly the very elite players: Crosby, Watt, Bosa, Bosa, Parsons. For those guys, your statement holds true. They were elite from the moment they hit an NFL field.
However, there's a bunch of other guys that were just very good the first handful of years: Reddick, Gary, Hendrickson, Hunter, Burns that in latter years became what I'd consider top tier guys.