By admin 
Every NFL draft produces busts. The 2010s produced an unusually rich crop of them – high picks, enormous contracts, and players who couldn’t survive the gap between what scouts projected and what the NFL actually required.
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Here are the ten that hurt the most, ranked by the combination of draft position, expectations, and how completely the promise collapsed.
10. Tavon Austin – Los Angeles Rams, Round 1, Pick 8, 2013
The Rams believed Austin’s college explosiveness – 33 career touchdowns at West Virginia, electrifying open-field runs, elite return ability – would translate into a game-breaking weapon at the NFL level.
They took him eighth overall and built an entire offensive system around his ability to make defenders miss in space.
It didn’t translate. Austin spent five seasons in Los Angeles producing flashes and declining opportunities. The runs that worked in the Big 12 went sideways against NFL defensive coordinators who had two weeks to gameplan specifically for him.
The Rams eventually traded him to the Cowboys in 2018 for a sixth-round pick. A player taken eighth overall was moved for a sixth-rounder four years later. The gap between what Austin was supposed to be and what he became is the defining measurement of a bust.
9. Justin Gilbert – Cleveland Browns, Round 1, Pick 8, 2014
The same year the Rams took Austin eighth in 2013, the Browns took Justin Gilbert eighth in 2014 – and Gilbert managed to produce less than Austin despite playing the same position as some of the most important talent in the NFL.
Gilbert played 35 career games across three seasons. As a top-10 pick, that number is damning enough.
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He recorded one interception, was cut by the Browns after two seasons, had a brief stint with the Steelers, and was out of the league entirely by 2017.
The 2014 draft class produced Khalil Mack (5th pick), Aaron Donald (13th), Odell Beckham Jr. (12th), Zack Martin (16th), and Mike Evans (7th). Gilbert went eighth and played 35 games over three seasons before washing out of the league. The same team, in the same draft, also took Johnny Manziel in the first round. The 2014 Browns were operating at a different level of bad.
8. Kevin White – Chicago Bears, Round 1, Pick 7, 2015
White was a 6-foot-3 receiver with elite athleticism coming out of West Virginia, and the Bears were desperate for a number-one wide receiver. They took him seventh overall, three spots after Amari Cooper went to the Raiders fourth overall. Cooper became an All-Pro. White missed most of five of his six NFL seasons to injuries.
The full list: fractured fibula before his rookie season (missed all of 2015), shoulder injury (missed most of 2016), broken arm (missed most of 2017), released in 2018.
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White finished with fewer than 35 career catches. The Bears found out almost immediately that the athleticism that made White a top-10 pick was attached to a body that couldn’t withstand the repeated trauma of an NFL season.
Cooper, taken three spots earlier at fourth overall, caught 1,000+ yards in multiple seasons. White caught passes in approximately as many games as he missed.
7. Marcus Mariota – Tennessee Titans, Round 1, Pick 2, 2015
Mariota won the Heisman Trophy at Oregon, ran Chip Kelly’s spread offense to perfection, and was taken second overall by the Titans as the heir to a franchise that needed a quarterback.
He showed enough in his first few seasons – mobility, accuracy on bootlegs, occasional flashes of brilliance – to keep the organization invested without ever taking the step that justified a second-overall pick.
The verdict came in 2019 when the Titans benched Mariota for Ryan Tannehill, a journeyman who had previously been run out of Miami.
Tannehill won Comeback Player of the Year that season, led Tennessee to the AFC Championship Game, and played in Nashville for four more years. Mariota spent the next four seasons as a backup and fringe starter in Las Vegas and Atlanta. The player replaced by Ryan Tannehill – who then went to the conference championship – is not who the Titans thought they were getting with the second pick.
6. Dion Jordan – Miami Dolphins, Round 1, Pick 3, 2013
Jordan came out of Oregon as a converted wide receiver turned pass rusher – long, athletic, with an intriguing combination of edge-setting ability and speed.
The Dolphins took him third overall, one pick after Luke Joeckel – behind Eric Fisher, who went first overall to Kansas City, and ahead of Dee Milliner, who went ninth to the Jets. He was supposed to be a cornerstone of the Miami defense for a decade.
He played in 28 games over five seasons and totaled 6.5 career sacks.
He was suspended by the NFL three times for substance abuse violations, missing over two full seasons of games. The Dolphins released him in 2015, two years after paying third-overall pick money for a player who had essentially stopped playing football.
A top-3 pick who recorded fewer career sacks than many undrafted free agents – and who spent more time suspended than starting. The wasted potential of the pick is compounded by who the Dolphins could have selected: that same 2013 draft produced Eric Fisher, Dee Milliner, Lane Johnson, and Chance Warmack in the top 10. Jordan would have been a bust regardless of what came later. What came later just made it more painful.
5. Blake Bortles – Jacksonville Jaguars, Round 1, Pick 3, 2014
Bortles had one genuinely good season – 2017, when he threw for 3,687 yards, the Jaguars went 10-6 behind one of the best defenses in football, and Jacksonville came within a Tom Brady comeback of reaching the Super Bowl.
That one season is the best argument against putting Bortles on this list. Every other season is the argument for it.
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In five seasons as Jacksonville’s starter, Bortles threw 103 touchdown passes and 75 interceptions and compiled a passer rating that ranked in the bottom quarter of qualified starters.
The Jaguars gave him a three-year, $54 million extension after the 2017 run. He went 5-11 the following season and was released.
The third pick in the draft produced one memorable playoff run and four largely forgettable seasons. The Jacksonville franchise had a window – a legitimately great defense, a functional running game – and burned it on a quarterback who couldn’t capitalize on either advantage.
4. Greg Robinson – St. Louis Rams, Round 1, Pick 2, 2014
The Rams took Robinson second overall to protect their quarterback – a reasonable decision given that offensive tackle is one of the most valuable positions in football.
Robinson had the size and athleticism that typically produces an elite left tackle. He did not produce an elite left tackle.
Robinson spent three seasons with the Rams without becoming a reliable starter. He was traded to the Lions and the Browns and the Browns released him after he was arrested at a border checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border, allegedly attempting to smuggle 157 pounds of marijuana through customs.
His legal troubles ended his NFL career entirely. The second pick in the 2014 draft played in 79 career games, never made a Pro Bowl, and was last known for a border crossing arrest. The Rams gave up the second-overall pick for that.
3. Sam Bradford – St. Louis Rams, Round 1, Pick 1, 2010
Bradford won the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma and came into the NFL as the consensus top prospect in a quarterback-heavy class.
The Rams took him first overall and gave him a six-year, $78 million contract – the largest rookie deal in NFL history at the time. He proceeded to tear his ACL twice in two years and become the walking symbol of why the rookie salary scale needed to change.
Bradford started for four different NFL teams over nine seasons – the Rams, Eagles, Vikings, and Cardinals. He was durable enough to start significant stretches in some of those seasons but never durable enough to build a team around.
He went 34-48-1 as a starter, never won a playoff game, and collected enormous contracts at every stop. The Rams, Eagles, and Vikings all committed substantial resources to a quarterback who required those resources to finish seasons. The Vikings paid him $18 million for two starts in 2017 before a knee injury ended his season, and they turned to Case Keenum. Bradford took the money, absorbed the injury, and moved on. First overall pick. Zero playoff wins. Enormous contracts at four different franchises.
2. Johnny Manziel – Cleveland Browns, Round 1, Pick 22, 2014
The case for Manziel being higher on this list: he made only eight starts, threw 7 touchdowns and 7 interceptions, and was released after two seasons. He never played another NFL snap.
His career passer rating was 74.4. By pure production, he’s not in the same class as Bradford or Bortles in terms of dollars wasted or years of organizational commitment.
The case for Manziel being on the list at all: the spectacle of the collapse. Johnny Football had been one of the most celebrated college players of his generation, a Heisman winner who played with charisma and improvisation and made the impossible look easy.
The NFL version was a player who couldn’t get out of his own way off the field, whose off-field behavior became a national news story before he’d won a meaningful game, and who was out of the league at 23 years old. The Browns took him 22nd in the same draft they took Justin Gilbert eighth. That’s the 2014 Browns in one sentence.
1. Mitchell Trubisky – Chicago Bears, Round 1, Pick 2, 2017
This is the bust that defines the 2010s – not because Trubisky was the most expensive mistake, or because he played the least, but because of who the Bears passed over to take him.
In the 2017 NFL Draft, the Bears traded up to the second pick specifically to select Trubisky, a one-year starter at North Carolina.
With the 10th pick, the Chiefs took Patrick Mahomes. With the 12th pick, the Texans took Deshaun Watson. The Bears used the second pick, in a trade, for a player who went 29-21 as a starter, made one Pro Bowl (2018), and was replaced by Andy Dalton and then Justin Fields.
Mahomes has won three Super Bowls since that draft. Watson was a franchise quarterback before his own circumstances derailed his career. Trubisky was the quarterback the Bears chose above both of them and later handed to the Pittsburgh Steelers as a backup, where he had a decent enough season to remind everyone what might have been if he’d been allowed to develop instead of starting immediately.
The Bears paid a premium to move up to the second pick and missed the greatest quarterback prospect of the last 20 years by eight spots. That’s the standard against which all other draft misses in the 2010s should be measured – and nothing else comes close.
The 2010s were defined by a league-wide overvaluation of quarterback athleticism and an undervaluation of anticipation, accuracy, and processing speed.
Bradford, Bortles, Mariota, Manziel, and Trubisky all had physical tools that jumped off the tape. None of them had the thing that actually makes quarterbacks work at the NFL level.
The teams that found that out the hard way paid for it in lost seasons, wasted picks, and the particular misery of watching other franchises build dynasties while you replaced your starting quarterback for the third time in six years.
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This story was originally published July 30, 2026 at 5:04 AM.