Heisman busts: 12 biggest Heisman Trophy winners who flamed out in the NFL

Winning the Heisman Trophy didn’t guarantee NFL stardom for these former college stars who wound up Heisman busts.

Every December, the college football media fawns over who will be named the next winner of the Heisman Trophy. It is still the most prestigious award any college football player can hope to win, as joining the illustrious Heisman brotherhood is not to be taken lightly. However, the award seems to be a tad out of touch and doesn’t necessarily reflect who the best player really is.

For much of its history, the Heisman has gone to a star quarterback on a contending team or a bell-cow running back who has his team in the national championship conversation. It is extremely rare for a player starring at any other position on the gridiron to win the award, although it has happened before, such as Tim Brown as a wide receiver and Charles Woodson as a defensive back.

But because this award predominantly goes to a quarterback roughly 75 percent of the time during the 21st century, we have had more than our fair share of Heisman busts at the professional level. Since 2000, we can only say that four Heisman winners were not busts in the NFL: Carson Palmer (2002), Mark Ingram Jr. (2009), Cam Newton (2010) and Derrick Henry (2015).

There are also three quarterbacks whose status as a boom or bust professionally has yet to be fully determined. Those quarterbacks include Lamar Jackson (2016), Baker Mayfield (2017) and Kyler Murray (2018), all of whom have had varying levels of success professionally, although Jackson has taken the NFL by storm in his first full year as a starter in 2018 with Baltimore.

So we’re really at least a year or so away from deciding if those three Heisman Trophy winners were more boom than bust. There is also four 21st century Heisman winners that were never really serious NFL Draft prospects. We will touch on those four, as we embark on our dissection of the eight biggest Heisman Trophy busts since the year 2000.