Every NFL Draft carries the same basic tension: a team's evaluation staff has to invest real draft capital and money in unproven college players, and history is full of examples of that decision going spectacularly right or spectacularly wrong. The players below are widely regarded by analysts, historians and the broader football community as some of the biggest misses and steals in draft history, based on how their careers actually played out relative to expectations, not a personal ranking. Here's a breakdown organized by where each player was actually selected.

Biggest Misses: No. 1 and No. 2 Overall

JaMarcus Russell is widely considered the biggest miss in draft history. Selected No. 1 overall by the Oakland Raiders in 2007 out of LSU, Russell went 7-18 as a starter, the worst record by any quarterback taken first overall, while completing just 52.1 percent of his passes with 18 touchdowns against 23 interceptions and 25 fumbles over three seasons before Oakland released him. Ryan Leaf, taken No. 2 overall by the San Diego Chargers in 1998 one pick after Peyton Manning went first to the Colts, is the other name most frequently cited alongside Russell. Leaf lasted only three injury- and controversy-plagued seasons, throwing just 2 touchdowns against 15 interceptions as a rookie.

The No. 2 overall slot has produced several other notable misses. Tony Mandarich went second overall to the Green Bay Packers in 1989 after entering the draft with enormous hype; the pick looked worse in hindsight given that Barry Sanders, Deion Sanders and Derrick Thomas, all future Hall of Famers, were still on the board. In 2003, the Detroit Lions took wide receiver Charles Rogers second overall, one pick ahead of Andre Johnson, who went on to a Hall of Fame-caliber career with the Houston Texans while Rogers' career was cut short by injuries and off-field issues.

Misses Widely Cited Further Into the First Round

Not every notable miss came at the very top of the draft. The Cleveland Browns selected quarterback Johnny Manziel 22nd overall in 2014 after his Heisman-winning college career at Texas A&M, but off-field issues and inconsistent play limited him to just two NFL seasons and a 2-6 record as a starter before he was out of the league entirely. The Jacksonville Jaguars traded up to take quarterback Blaine Gabbert 10th overall in 2011, and he went 5-22 as a starter over three seasons with the team, throwing 22 touchdowns against 24 interceptions, before catching on elsewhere as a backup. Notably, Gabbert was selected one pick before the Houston Texans took J.J. Watt, who went on to a Hall of Fame-caliber career and three Defensive Player of the Year awards.

Biggest Steals: Day Three and Beyond

Tom Brady's selection by the New England Patriots at pick 199 in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft stands as the standard against which every other draft steal gets measured. Brady went on to win seven Super Bowl titles, three NFL MVP awards and five Super Bowl MVP awards across a 23-year career. He wasn't even the intended long-term answer at quarterback when drafted; an injury to starter Drew Bledsoe in 2001 opened the door for Brady, who never gave the job back.

Brady isn't the only quarterback to slip deep into the draft before building a Hall of Fame career. Johnny Unitas went in the ninth round at pick 102 in the 1955 draft to the Baltimore Colts and became a Hall of Famer. Joe Montana was taken in the third round at pick 82 by the San Francisco 49ers in 1979 and went on to win four Super Bowl titles. Even further back, Bart Starr fell all the way to the 17th round, pick 200, in the 1956 draft before the Green Bay Packers selected him; he went on to win five championships and a Hall of Fame induction, spending his entire 16-year career in Green Bay.

Steals Widely Cited Outside the Quarterback Position

Draft steals aren't limited to quarterbacks. Cornerback Aeneas Williams went in the third round at pick 59 to the Arizona Cardinals in the 1991 draft and went on to make eight Pro Bowls and three All-Pro teams over a 14-year career, finishing with 55 career interceptions and a spot in the Hall of Fame. More recently, tight end Trey McBride went to the Arizona Cardinals in the second round at pick 55 in the 2022 draft and has developed into one of the position's top players, now the NFL's highest-paid tight end by average annual salary after his extension with the team.

What Separates a Steal From a Miss

The clearest pattern across both categories is how little draft position alone predicts NFL success. Every player above who became a steal was picked outside the first round, several of them well into the double-digit rounds that no longer even exist in today's seven-round draft format. On the other side, nearly every well-known miss came in the top few picks of the first round, where the hype and financial investment are highest and the fall from expectations is steepest. That gap between investment and outcome is part of why draft misses tend to get remembered far longer than mid-round hits, even when a team's later-round picks quietly outperform its earlier ones.

It's also worth noting how much these lists can shift over time. A player who looks like a miss after two disappointing seasons can still turn his career around with a change of scenery, and a player who looks like a steal after a hot rookie year can just as easily flame out. That inherent uncertainty is part of what keeps the draft one of the most heavily scrutinized events on the NFL calendar every year.

Recent Steals Worth Tracking

The most recent NFL Draft classes have already started producing their own steal candidates. Colorado State tight end Trey McBride's rise from a second-round pick to the league's highest-paid player at his position took less than three full seasons, a reminder that it doesn't always take decades for a mid-round pick's true value to become clear. Other recent Day Two and Day Three picks around the league have followed similar trajectories, developing into full-time starters and difference-makers well before their rookie contracts even expire, while some first-round picks from the same draft classes have already struggled to lock down starting jobs.

That pattern tends to repeat every few years. Front offices spend enormous resources on predraft evaluation, from the NFL Scouting Combine to private workouts to game film breakdowns, and still routinely miss on picks with every resource available to them, while also occasionally stumbling into a franchise-altering player in the middle rounds almost by accident. It's part of why draft grades handed out immediately after selections are made carry so little predictive weight; the players discussed here mostly needed several years in the league before anyone could say with confidence whether they were a steal or a miss.

Why the Seven-Round Format Changed the Math

It's also worth remembering that several of the biggest steals on this list, including Unitas and Starr, came in an era when the draft ran far longer than it does today. The NFL Draft has been trimmed down to seven rounds since 1994, meaning a modern equivalent of Starr's 17th-round selection or Unitas's ninth-round selection simply isn't possible anymore; today's draft ends at pick 224 or so, compared to well over 400 picks in some older drafts. Brady's sixth-round selection, by contrast, still falls within today's shortened format, which is part of why his story continues to resonate as the standard for modern-era steals specifically. That shrinking pool of rounds overall makes every remaining pick carry more weight than it once did, and it's part of why a mid-round steal in today's draft, like McBride, tends to draw far more immediate national attention than a similar find would have decades ago, when there were simply more picks and more chances for a franchise to stumble into a diamond in the later rounds.