Oklahoma football: 5 great Sooners who were NFL busts

Rather than stay in Texas, where he played his high school football as a standout recruit in Houston, Cedric Jones elected to cross rivalry lines and play for the Sooners in his collegiate career. And while that’s probably blasphemous to the Longhorns faithful who believe he should’ve donned burnt orange in college, Oklahoma football fans are surely thankful that the big defensive lineman decided to take his talents to Norman.

Early in his career with the Sooners, Jones played mostly as a reserve and didn’t make all that much of an impact. In fact, over his first two seasons in the program, the big man only had 6.5 combined sacks. It wasn’t until his junior season that he broke onto the scene and emerged as one of the premier defensive players in the country.

As a junior in the 1994 season, Jones set the single-season sack record for the Sooners, registering 14.0 quarterback traps. That mark was tied three years later but still stands at Oklahoma. For his final act with the Sooners, he continued to harass quarterbacks with 11.0 sacks. Buoyed by those two seasons, he set the career mark at the school for sacks.

Given the pedigree he displayed as a college athlete, the New York Giants selected Jones with the No. 5 overall pick in the 1996 NFL Draft. And while he didn’t completely burn out immediately, playing in 73 games over five seasons, he was hardly impactful with just 15.0 career sacks, even with 7.5 in 1999. In 2001, he signed with the St. Louis Rams but an off-field accident prematurely ended his career.