After one of the biggest busts in NFL history terminated his short lived career in 2009, today he says he wants back in. That man is JaMarcus Russell, a 6-6, 260lb quarterback out of LSU. Russell was drafted #1 overall by the Oakland Raiders in the 2007 NFL Draft. With what scouts viewed as a high ceiling for a plus sized quarterback at the time, little did they know how inefficient Russell would be at the professional level. It's hard to blame scouts, or even the Raiders for selecting Russell so high. His college numbers were phenomenal, and he wowed many with his raw arm strength. Here are his CAREER statistics in 3 NFL seasons with the Raiders.
Completion Percentage: 52.1%
QBR: 65.2
Yards: 4,083
TDs: 18
INTs: 23
I have definitely seen better stat lines than that, for sure. Now reportedly Russell has sent letters to every NFL team stating that he will play for free. To me, that's completely unrealistic and a truly dumb move on Russell's end. He had a chance to just fade away and be forgotten and never made fun of again, but here he is thrusting himself back into the spotlight. The harsh reality for Russell is that he never had the body to be an effective NFL quarterback that could win his team games. Ultimately, his rocket arm clouded the vision of the late Al Davis and the rest of the Raiders front office. If anything, Russell requesting to be considered by NFL teams again shows how talented the rest of the 2007 NFL Draft class was.
To me that looks like the best corner in football (Revis), two of the best running backs the past 8 seasons hands down (Peterson, Lynch), all-pro tackle (Thomas), and a nice chunk of pro bowl players (Willis, Timmons, Landry). The Raiders clearly missed out on a chance to draft a player that could have been built around to push them in a winning direction. As far as JaMarcus Russell is concerned, I think I might have an idea...
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