The Run and Shoot: From Boom to Bust
by Luke Paul Chandler
They came onto campus with big expectations. They never lived up to them. Can these once highly touted players ever touch their vast potential in the league?
By Andrew Calara
The phenomenon of the hotshot high school recruit is an interesting one. Every year, recruiting pundits at sites such as Rivals.com and Scout.com as well as other forms of media put together their rankings of the best high school prospects. Football fans everywhere get excited about these top names as they try to land the best prospects to carry their favorite college football programs for the next four years. Teenagers are labeled as saviors by fans who often have seen little more than highlight reels and media hype. Sometimes, in the case of a Vince Young or Tim Tebow, they do live up to the accolades, bringing wins, awards and titles to the university. But not every prospect can live up to the hype. Every year, we see players with five stars next to their name fall by the wayside. Sometimes, the surefire superstars are merely serviceable-to-pretty good college players, yet still get their shot in the NFL, ala Lorenzo Booker. In more unfortunate cases, the super prospects fall off hard, never to be heard from again. At this time three and four years ago, college teams were battling hard for the likes of Kyle Wright, Whitney Lewis and Willie Williams. Sometimes, in the case of Wright, they just turned out to never be very good, disappointing their teams every time they played. Sometimes, in the case of Lewis, they run into academic problems and slip into football Never-Neverland. And in the case of players like Williams, they run into legal problems and throw their entire livelihoods in limbo.
All hope is not lost for the former super-prospect, though. The NFL represents a new starts of sorts in football, where even the best prospects must prove themselves. While the hype and hopes surrounding a late-round pick or undrafted free agent is much less, it still represents a shot of making something of yourself in the football world. Every year, a few of these former saviors find their niche in the pros and finally start to blossom into the players people saw them as when they were eighteen years old.
After a disappointing and injury plagued career at Stanford, Trent Edwards was able to parlay his pre-draft workouts into a relatively high third-round selection. He had a solid rookie year and looks to be the quarterback of the future in Buffalo. Ronald Curry came into college with as much hype as anyone, being a top prospect in both basketball and football. He starred in neither. But Curry got his shot as a seventh-round flyer, moved from quarterback to wide receiver, and made a solid NFL career for himself. There are even cases of guys who did live up to the hype in college, flamed out initially in the NFL and made a career resurgence late. The poster boy of that is probably Tommy Maddox, a former first-round pick from UCLA who flamed out of the league at first, bounced around to the Arena League and now defunct XFL. He ended up a surprise late-career starter for the Steelers. All it takes is the opportunity and right breaks.
What is to happen to this latest group of failed super-recruits? Most likely they won’t be able to cut it in the league. It’s tough enough to make the league as a highly touted pick with great credentials in college. There’s no good reason to think that, say, Xavier Lee will pick up the nuances of quarterbacking that he never picked up in college. There’s no good reason to think that an Alley Broussard or Kregg Lumpkin will avoid the killer injuries that plagued them in college. But crazy things have happened in the NFL. This is a league where college backups such as Willie Parker can go to Pro Bowls, and sixth-round picks like Tom Brady can lead their team to Super Bowls.
So when you see the likes of an Anthony Morelli or Cameron Colvin signing tiny contracts for little money just to get their shot, remember there was once a much more glorious time for them, when they were supposed to be the guy as opposed to being just a guy. It will take a work ethic they often times never had in college and a lot of luck just to make a roster. Most likely, they’ll move on to looking for regular jobs in the next few years, just like thousands of college graduates every year. But maybe, just maybe, five years from now we’re talking about starting quarterback Sam Keller or something stranger. Crazier things have happened.
For complaints, comments, and suggestions, feel free to e-mail me at andrewc@newerascouting.com