Turn 1 Bust Into A Good Player

[Pugger]

I have 2.  

Rich Campbell at #6 in 1981.   Two picks later SF drafted Ronnie Lott.  😪

Tony Mandarich at #2 in 1998.  It is dreadful that Barry Sanders and Dion Sanders were still there for the taking.  Yikes.

[Forge]

34 minutes ago, adamq said:

I cant call Drake Jackson a bust yet, can't say Lance because Purdy is better than just a "good starter". I was go all the way back to Jalen Hurd but we have Jauan Jennings.

 

Jake Moody. 60% in the postseason is a tough pill to swallow when Gould was perfect for so many years

 

23 minutes ago, OkeyDoke21 said:

Trey Lance would've been cool, but I'm good with Purdy, so I'll go with Alex Smith.  Not really a bust, per se, but if his career had been more inline with Aaron Rodgers, it would've saved me a decade of misery.  Having him be able to sit at a table with Montana and Young lifts the franchise to a different level.  

I think the correct answer is solly for the niners, tbh. Impossible dude not to root for. Good guy. Went through some tough things. I wish it had gone better on a professional level, maybe even beyond what improvement he would give the niners as a team

[OkeyDoke21]

14 minutes ago, Forge said:

 

I think the correct answer is solly for the niners, tbh. Impossible dude not to root for. Good guy. Went through some tough things. I wish it had gone better on a professional level, maybe even beyond what improvement he would give the niners as a team

I wouldn't argue with that choice.  He was one of the names I was bouncing around before going with Smith.  After reading the title of the thread again, Smith probably isn't the best choice.  I went more the make them great route than good.  

[Kiltman]

Lots of choices, but reverberations wise Freddie Mitchell not being a bust (outside 4th&26) would’ve probably gotten the Eagles a ring in the 2000s.

Even being half of the player of some of the guys he was taken before (Reggie Wayne, Chad Johnson, Steve Smith) would’ve been great.

Do they still go all out for TO a couple years later? Are the vibes of 2000-2004 sustained into 2005-2007 instead of people turning on McNabb?

A lot of other ones they lucked out of.

Current team would love if Nakobe Dean hits as a star LB, but looking less likely after two injury filled years.

[7DnBrnc53]

1 hour ago, Pugger said:

I have 2.  

Rich Campbell at #6 in 1981.   Two picks later SF drafted Ronnie Lott.  😪

Tony Mandarich at #2 in 1989.  It is dreadful that Barry Sanders and Dion Sanders were still there for the taking.  Yikes.

What's criminal is that they took Lott out to dinner right before the draft, yet they changed their mind the next day. Lloyd Eaton, their west coast scout, told Bob Harlan (who had a different role in the organization back then) that Rich couldn't play. Harlan asked him if he told them that, and Lloyd said that they don't listen to him, anyway. 

Lloyd is right. Two years earlier, Packer scout Red Cochrane watched a certain Notre Dame QB for four years. Red basically said that the kid just wins. He threw a fit for Montana, but Starr ignored him, and drafted two scrubs from Maryland in the second and third rounds (Steve Atkins and Charles Jordan). 

Also, I read somewhere that Lindy Infante allegedly wanted Sanders, but Tom Braatz decided on Mandarich. 

Edited February 9 by 7DnBrnc53

[vikingsrule]

Wonder how different things would be for the Vikings and Kirk Cousins if Teddy Bridgewater wasn’t essentially an injury bust and became a good QB like many thought at one point. 

[warfelg]

Steelers centric I got 2 whole drafts for you basically:

2008: Mendenhall, Limas Sweed, Bruce Davis, Tony Hills were the top 4 picks

2009: Evander Hood, Kraig Urbik, Mike Wallace, Keenan Lewis were the top 4 picks

One of those guys became good under us, one really developed after the fact.  This was right when the turnover from Cowher guys to Tomlin guys started and Colbert dropped the ball in two whole drafts.

Heck even 2010 got only 2.5 good players for us in Pouncey, Brown, and the short time Worilds was good. 2011 was a mixed bag as Heyward has been a great, Gilbert was serviceable, everyone else was bad.  And 2012 basically only gave us DeCastro.  

5 drafts, 4 long term players.

[7DnBrnc53]

3 hours ago, warfelg said:

I’m confident I’m gonna give the strangest answer:

Sam Bradford

I think his rookie year changed the NFL forever. He was ok not great, but got a HUGE contract that caused the NFL/NFLPA to agree to the rookie pay scale. Then he never lived up to the contract so the owners had more ammo to keep rookie wages artificially low. If he came out and was great (like 64% comp, 4k yards, 25+ TD, 10 or less INT) then we likely don’t have the rookie pay scale. 

This pushed more teams to take shots at trades and developmental draft players. It was suddenly less cost prohibitive to make a mistake. It also fundamentally changed team building and contracts for other players as now with a good young QB you can overpay elsewhere. 

I remember that draft. I thought that the Rams should have taken Suh. There is another person (a blog ran by a Ram fan) that thought the same thing at the time:

LogicalOptimizer: If we draft Sam Bradford, it will end in tears

[Blackstar12]

For the Colts it difficult because they went from Manning to Luck so QB isn’t the choice. The Colts failed to get good pass rushers after Freeny or Mathis. One player that would’ve helped them if he turned out good was Bjoern Werner.  On offense it’s kinda hard not looking at how bad Trent Richardson was. If he was good that would’ve taken a lot of pressure off Luck. Finally you can pick all those awful OL players that Luck had early in his career.

Edited February 9 by Blackstar12

[Steelersfan43]

19 minutes ago, warfelg said:

Steelers centric I got 2 whole drafts for you basically:

2008: Mendenhall, Limas Sweed, Bruce Davis, Tony Hills were the top 4 picks

2009: Evander Hood, Kraig Urbik, Mike Wallace, Keenan Lewis were the top 4 picks

One of those guys became good under us, one really developed after the fact.  This was right when the turnover from Cowher guys to Tomlin guys started and Colbert dropped the ball in two whole drafts.

Heck even 2010 got only 2.5 good players for us in Pouncey, Brown, and the short time Worilds was good. 2011 was a mixed bag as Heyward has been a great, Gilbert was serviceable, everyone else was bad.  And 2012 basically only gave us DeCastro.  

5 drafts, 4 long term players.

and if people want to know why the steelers did not win many playoffs game in the killer B's era,just to look at the first round pick at 2013 and the entire draft of 2016....The 2015 draft was awful too,Dupree in the first round and nothing after that!

[fluhartz]

For the Bengals.

Akili Smith and Jon Ross and there are many more but both of these guys were just utter busts

The guy I would loved to change is Odell Thurman.

Rookie season 5 picks, 5 forced fumbles and was all over the field.  Got in substance abuse trouble 2nd year and was done.

The man was going to be a superstar, but addiction is a hell of a thing.

[Jakuvious]

So, how "good" are we talking here? Because if we can make them very good, everyone's answer should be some QB in their team's history. If "good" means like, average Derek Carr level "good," then that just grants that team a little bit of purgatory.

Because for the Chiefs, Todd Blackledge or maybe Brodie Croyle if we want to go more modern would probably be the biggest swings in team quality you could create. But elevating the bad 80s and 00s teams to mediocre wouldn't be worth the ripple effect it would have on the 90s and 10s teams that built talent off of some of those resources. Maybe Matt Blundin or Mike Elkins would've been better timing, getting steady QB play on those early 90s teams rather than having to cycle through whoever the 49ers decided they didn't want anymore. But if we're just getting a mediocre QB out of any of these guys, there's little point.

Otherwise, Ryan Sims might be the big one that stands out, to me. Drafted in 2002, we desperately needed the defense to do something in 2003, and after Maslowski got hurt, they just couldn't. Might not have been enough of a push, but if Sims being competent would've been enough for one stop against Indy in the postseason that year, that might've been a much more memorable team, rather than just a what could have been kind of thing.

We haven't had many true busts lately, though. Couple of spotty 2nd round picks. Mecole Hardman or Skyy Moore being better would've been nice this season, obviously. Maybe if Breeland Speaks was as good in the NFL as he was in the UFL, Ford would've been on the bench rather than on the Patriots' side of the line of scrimmage. But it feels just a tad greedy to say man, if only we hit a few more picks these past few years.

[Kiwibrown]

Any browns first round pick from 1999-2016 bar 2006 Kamerion Wimberley 2007 1.3. 2008 Alex Mack

 

 

id choose

Courtney Brown. 

Dude was talented 270 ran a 4.5. 

Seems like a good intense dude. 

He was a bust because of injury, and his injury was through commitment to the game.

[August4th]

Devin Bush

[7DnBrnc53]

3 hours ago, Jakuvious said:

Because for the Chiefs, Todd Blackledge or maybe Brodie Croyle if we want to go more modern would probably be the biggest swings in team quality you could create. But elevating the bad 80s and 00s teams to mediocre wouldn't be worth the ripple effect it would have on the 90s and 10s teams that built talent off of some of those resources. Maybe Matt Blundin or Mike Elkins would've been better timing, getting steady QB play on those early 90s teams rather than having to cycle through whoever the 49ers decided they didn't want anymore. But if we're just getting a mediocre QB out of any of these guys, there's little point.

Otherwise, Ryan Sims might be the big one that stands out, to me. Drafted in 2002, we desperately needed the defense to do something in 2003, and after Maslowski got hurt, they just couldn't. Might not have been enough of a push, but if Sims being competent would've been enough for one stop against Indy in the postseason that year, that might've been a much more memorable team, rather than just a what could have been kind of thing.

What I don't understand about Blackledge is how the Chiefs didn't commit to him one way or the other by 1985. Either he is the guy or he isn't. Also, the impression I get about Blundin is that they didn't want to give him a chance. They were obsessed with bringing in overrated 49er castoffs after Montana (I don't know what they saw in Grbac. The Ravens killed their chances of repeating when they chose him over Dilfer. I heard that their players knew that they weren't going to repeat after meeting Elvis). 

Also, why did they take Sims over John Henderson? Don't understand that. I remember rumblings about how Sims may have been made by playing with Peppers to some degree. 

Edited February 10 by 7DnBrnc53