Reasons for being a "bust" in the NFL

[Shanedorf]

19 hours ago, jebrick said:

The main reason is expectations.  You do not live up to expectations you are a bust for that team.

Indeed.

If you take the exact same player and exact same career:
If you were drafted in round 1 - you're labeled a bust
If you were drafted in round 4 - you're called an average NFL player

[tom cody]

I think the atmosphere around a team matters too. A player goes to a team that is good, he'll have it in him to perform well. He goes to a team that's not so good, I think the opposite would occur. 

[Pugger]

Mandarich would have been a bust for any team that year.  I find it incredible nobody before that draft detected or suspected that he was on steroids. 

[y*so*blu]

1 hour ago, Pugger said:

Mandarich would have been a bust for any team that year.  I find it incredible nobody before that draft detected or suspected that he was on steroids. 

According to Mandarich there were only three major drug tests to pass in the NCAA and none of them was random, so there was little danger of getting caught. He had so many issues that steroids were just the tip of the iceberg.

I think the players' personal lives play a role in their performance that is rarely considered. We watch them from a distance expecting them to get this many snaps and gain that many yards, but there are many factors affecting those things that we never learn about. If they don't meet our expectations, they are labeled busts and morally discarded by the same sports media that built them up as hot prospects. It's a cruel sport in many ways.

[Tugboat]

Lack of talent, lack of drive and commitment or off-field distractions, lack of fit in a system...in no particular order.  That's how "busts" happen.  It can be any one of those three, or all of them.  But it absolutely does matter where a player ends up.

 

Some guys just have a very narrow skillset that only really fits a very specific niche role, and never manage to find the landing spot that can take advantage of it.  Especially when they're a highly touted pick with big expectations...and teams keep trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, hoping that they'll magically become the all-around stud they were drafted to be.  Teams and coaches have all kinds of time of day to try to "reclaim" highly regarded prospects who didn't work out in their initial spot.  But so often, they try to "rejuvenate" these players' careers by trying and doing the same things the first team did, all over again.  Rather than the reclamation projects that actually sometimes work out...where the new coaches salvage something by finding a novel, unique way to use that player in a role tailored to fit what they can do...rather than what they've already proven they can't actually do.

 

The culture of a team can also be huge in the "off field issues" type of potential bust too.  Some teams have a strong room that seems able to keep "questionable" behavior in check.  They can keep a player focused on the game, and their job.  Other teams...not so much.  When those players with off-field distraction issues land in organizations that don't have the strong program to keep a player focused and engaged, they often end up straying from the goal.  For those sorts of players, landing spot can be completely make or break.  If they wander off the prescribed path...they often don't even get another shot as a "reclamation project", unless they're obviously supremely talented.