2012 NFL Draft: 3 Big-Name Prospects Who Could Become NFL Busts

2012 NFL Draft: April 26-28
Profiling Landry Jones, Alshon Jeffery and LaMichael James

The NFL draft is an inexact science. The 2012 NFL Draft will prove no different.

In the early days of professional football, teams often selected players sight unseen based on regional scouting, statistics provided by the players' schools and newspaper clippings.

As the sport and technology evolved to produce more accessible game film, national scouting and pre-draft scouting combines, the science improved but the results were still a crapshoot, albeit a more educated crapshoot.

In today's world of Mel Kiper, multimillion-dollar cable packages and the NFL Combine in which players are poked, prodded and Wonderlicked under the watchful eye of the NFL Network's 24-hour draft coverage, the potential NFL stars of tomorrow are as visible as their counterparts they are trying to join and replace at the next level.

However, every year there are surprise players who outperform expectations (see Tebow, Tim) and, just as predictably—or unpredictably—there are busts. Just ask Ryan Leaf.

With the 2012 NFL Draft taking place over the course of three days next April, here are three players considered to be among the best in the nation who could turn out to be busts at the next level.

Landry Jones, QB, Oklahoma Sooners

Landry Jones is a heckuva college quarterback and he's done a fine job following in the footsteps of Oklahoma's Heisman-winning quarterback, reigning NFL Rookie of the Year and No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft, Sam Bradford.

Just look at the tape.

According to the highlight reel linked to this page, Jones has the vision, the accuracy, the speed, the arm strength and the stats to legitimize his pre-draft status as a top-five quarterback selection in the 2012 NFL Draft.

Entering the 2011 FBS college football season, the Oklahoma Sooners were ranked No. 1 in the nation and Jones was regarded by many as the second-best quarterback in the nation behind Stanford's Andrew Luck.

However, Jones' inconsistent play this season and the Sooners' disappointing 9-3 record have caused him to fall behind Southern Cal's Matt Barkley and Baylor University's 2011 Heisman Trophy winner, Robert Griffin III, to the fourth-best quarterback prospect in the 2012 NFL Draft.

Jones will likely be taken somewhere in the first round by a team looking to add depth to the position, but he is in no way ready to step onto the field as an opening day starter the way the Carolina Panthers' Cam Newton and the Cincinnati Bengals' Andy Dalton did this year.

Jones throws a nice deep ball and he may eventually learn the nuances of professional quarterbacking if given the opportunity to develop for a few seasons behind a solid veteran quarterback like an Eli Manning or Philip Rivers.

However, given the recent success of young quarterbacks in the NFL, Jones may not have the luxury of holding the clipboard if he goes to a team in need of immediate help at the most important position in football.

In that case, I don't much like his chances.

Bust Probability: 70 percent

Alshon Jeffery, WR, South Carolina Gamecocks

I wrote about Alshon Jeffery last week in a profile of skill position players the Carolina Panthers should be looking at to help Cam Newton elevate the team to the next level.

Jeffery has the physical tools and the skill set to become a solid NFL receiver like his predecessor at South Carolina, Sidney Rice.

However, his stats in 2011 have fallen precipitously since his record-setting sophomore campaign in 2010 when many thought he was the best wide receiver in the SEC ahead of Georgia's A.J. Green and Alabama's Julio Jones, both of whom are playing well as top-10 NFL draft picks in their rookie seasons.

I like Jeffery as a big, athletic receiver with great hands, but he has a soft body and some would say he's got a bit of a weight problem for a wideout.

Skills-wise, he reminds me a lot of a young Brandon Lloyd in his circus-catch ability.

Now, before you go saying Lloyd was the NFL's leading receiver in 2010 and that he's doing pretty well since being traded to the St. Louis Rams, he had a very mediocre career with the San Francisco 49ers, the Washington Redskins and the Chicago Bears.

At 6'4" and 229 pounds, Jeffery is also much bigger than Lloyd, but big receiver busts have proliferated in the 21st century.

In fact, you have to look no further than the Detroit Lions.

Michigan State's Charles Rogers (No. 2 overall, 2003 NFL Draft) and Southern Cal's Mike Williams (No. 10, 2005 NFL Draft) both selected early in the first round by former Lions' GM Matt Millen were epic busts, though Millen finally got it right when he drafted Calvin Johnson second overall in the 2007 NFL Draft.

Jeffery is a hard worker who has maximized his talents to get to this position and it's hard to imagine him going the ways of Rogers or Williams, but few tall receivers come along with as much hype as the Gamecock's all-time leading receiver and wind up having careers like Randy Moss or Calvin Johnson.

The odds of Jeffery having a solid career are in his favor, but it's more of a long stretch that he'll step onto the field as a superstar in his first couple of seasons.

Bust Probability: 40 percent

LaMichael James, RB, Oregon Ducks

LaMichael James is my favorite player in college football.

He is an undersized, elusive, lightning-fast running back playing in an up-tempo, high-scoring offense in the Pac-12.

Remind you of anyone?

If he were about five years older you might mistake him for the greatest Heisman-winning USC Trojans running back who never officially played college football, Reggie Bush, only Bush is three inches taller and just as fast.

Bush has had a solid NFL career with the New Orleans Saints and Miami Dolphins, but he has not lived up to his status as the No. 2 overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft.

James' success as an NFL running back will likely hinge on the system he is drafted into and how he is utilized by his future employer.

At 5'9" and 185 pounds, James lacks the size and durability to be an every-down back in the NFL right now, but he could be an effective third-down back and punt/kick returner in the mold of former Cleveland Brown Eric Metcalf at the start of his career.

The ceiling for James is to bulk up about 20 pounds without losing any of his speed or agility to become a Tiki Barber type of player, but it took Barber nearly six seasons to reach his potential and many considered him to be a bust until he ran off six 1,000-yard seasons in a seven-year stretch from 2000-2006.

I would not put money on James having a career as good as Barber's, nor would I put money on him staying healthy for an entire season at any point in his career, especially after seeing the elbow injury he suffered earlier this year against the California Bears.

James is a special college player but he'll be playing against grown men in the NFL.

Bust Probability: 55 percent

But I Could Be Wrong

As I said at the start of this slideshow, the NFL draft is an inexact science.

Despite the advances in scouting, painstaking physical and mental evaluations at the NFL Combine and the plethora of NFL draft "experts"—such as ESPN's Mel Kiper and Todd McShay and the guys at the NFL Network—no one really knows how a player is going to turn out until he takes the field on Sundays and proves his worth week in and week out.

Jones, Jeffery and James may turn out to be the best players taken in the 2012 NFL Draft.

Each young man profiled in this slideshow is ranked in the top five at his respective position according to WalterFootball.com and NFL.com's 2012 NFL Draft site and is projected to be a first- or second-round draft pick.

However, if he does not live up to the hype that has surrounded him throughout his college career and leading up to the draft when he finally takes the field on Sundays, he will be considered a bust.

I may or may not be a betting man—and for all you know, I am—but I'd be cautious before staking my franchise on the future success of these guys.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to your comments. You can follow Jimmy on Twitter @imapone24 or become a fan on his Bleacher Report profile.