Why do Heisman winners bust out in NFL?

Winning the Heisman Trophy should help jumpstart a college player’s career into the NFL, but why do so many of the winners end up becoming busts?

The Heisman Trophy remains the single most important individual honor a college football player can receive in a given year. It means he was the best quarterback or running back in college football that season, as the award never truly reflects who was the most outstanding or most dominant player in the college game that year. It’s just too hard to vote for a defensive lineman.

At the end of the day, the Heisman is really little more than a popularity contest to decide which blue-blood program has the best signal-caller this year, or whose bell-cow back ran over the competition en route to national relevance. Heisman voters like to be entertained by big-time throws and punishing runs that look really good on highlight reels. Blocks will never do that.

And for this reason, among many others, is why so many former Heisman winners end up busting out in the NFL. Simply put, the hype these fine collegiate players take with them professionally can oftentimes be too insurmountable for them to overcome in a sweaty locker room of grown-ass men who have to provide for their young families. Many of them don’t even stand a chance.

Besides growing national popularity and an overwhelming amount of hype, what else leads to many Heisman Trophy winners busting horrendously in the NFL? I said there were many reasons for it and I’m going to do my very best to try to explain to you all the contributing factors that build up a Heisman, only to see him fail in the NFL. The first topic of note is organizational dysfunction.

Let’s start with this. Let’s say your bright-eyed, strong-armed quarterback from a blue-blood college football program checks all the boxes you’d need for the face of the franchise. He’s a 6-foot-3 leader of men, who says all the right things at the podium and can make all his throws. He’s the sure-fire No. 1 overall pick, and he’s going to the NFL’s latest dumpster fire of hopelessness.

In college, he had five-stars to throw the ball to, five-stars to hand the ball off to and five-stars to keep him upright in an always clean pocket. His alma mater’s program is well-run and that’s why he went there. He had a choice in the matter. But when a team botches another season, guess who is going be deemed the savior of this sorry mess of supreme sadness?

He may want it so bad for his new boss and the fans for which he plays in front of, but he’s got a turnstile for a left tackle, a group of receivers who can’t catch, a running back who’s always hurt again and a head coach who is growing paranoid by the second in that his impulsive owner my can his ass at any minute. Unless this quarterback is a tractor and not a trailer, he can’t succeed here.

Okay, so we have unwonted popularity, insurmountable hype and inherent organizational dysfunction? What else is there the NFL can do to break a Heisman Trophy winner to ruin his once-proud football legacy? For the next topic of note, let’s go with he’s bought into the hype completely, thinks he’s hot stuff and isn’t willing to put in the work necessary to be great.

In college, this Heisman might have been the best player on the field in a game that featured maybe 10 future pros on the football field at any given time. Well, guess what happens in the NFL? All 22 full-grown men are pros and have to support their growing families. They don’t care how good you were at State and want to break your soul so their team can win and they get paid.

The second the Heisman winner gets distracted from the task at hand, it’s game over for the guy. The absolute last thing you want to do in the NFL is to live in the past. The NFL is short for Not For Long. If this player does not adapt from his great college situation to his presumably less-than-stellar one professionally, he’ll be out of the league before he knows, wondering what happened.

Thus far we have been deemed the cool kid of college football, facing immense pressure as a potential franchise savior, overcoming organizational chaos and not putting in the necessary work to continue to be great. What else can sink a star college player before he can even become anything professionally? Besides being injury-prone, let’s go with the saddest thing: Scheme fit.

Very, few players who enter the NFL aren’t scheme dependent. Your professional football destiny is more closely tied to timing and opportunity than anything. Some players can succeed anywhere, but most need to have the right players around them or be coached up by the right staff to put them in advantageous situations to succeed. This sort of offshoots organizational dysfunction.

So let me try to explain this the best I can. Let’s say you’re a quarterback who plays in the Air Raid or an up-tempo spread. You’re largely being told how to do something vs. why you are doing what you are doing in the passing game. The simplified route tree and basic protection concepts are pre-determined for you. So you don’t have to think, so you never have to, so you can play fast.

By not having elite knowledge of every route tree in every passing concept, the NFL game will forever look fast to you. For some, it does slow down. For others, it never does. In the NFL, you are going to win because of brains and not brawn. Winning with better athletes and emotion is how you win on Saturday. Winning with discipline and mental toughness is how you win on Sundays.

Overall, there is a multitude of reasons why Heisman Trophy winners bust so often in the NFL. They’re often overdrafted by bad teams, believe their own hype, don’t put in the work to be great, can’t accept top-tier coaching and lack the mental toughness to stand out against the most mentally tough men who ever played the sport of football. That is why Heisman winners bust out.

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