Oregon football: 5 great players who didn’t live up to the NFL hype

Oregon football stars who became NFL busts.

Even though Oregon football has never quite made it to the mountaintop and won a National Championship, they have been an undeniable staple in the college football world. Since 2010, they’ve made the National Championship Game twice and have won four conference championships as well in addition to producing their lone Heisman Trophy winner in program history.

Overall, the Ducks have won the Pac-12 (and other previous iterations) eight times since joining the conference in 1964. And it’s no shock that they’ve produced some highly revered players along the way, particularly over the last 20 years when they’ve built up Oregon football to its highest heights yet.

Unfortunately for the program, some of the great Ducks over the year weren’t able to capture the same things that made them stars in college once they got to the NFL. That is definitely the case with these five Oregon football standouts.

Remember when I mentioned that Oregon football has only produced one Heisman Trophy winner in the history of the program? The young man who accomplished that was Marcus Mariota, who took the Ducks to unbelievable highs in the heyday of the program in the early 2010s. And there’s a case to be made — one that’s difficult to argue — that he’s the greatest player in school history.

Mariota wasted little time making his presence known to the college football world. He became the first freshman (redshirt) to start for Oregon in over two decades and immediately had success. Leading the Ducks to a 12-1 record, he threw for 2,677 yards and 32 scores with only six interceptions while also registering 752 rushing yards and five scores and guiding the team to a Fiesta Bowl win.

As a sophomore, despite playing part of the year with a partially torn MCL, Mariota still led the team to an 11-2 record and became the first Oregon player ever to have 4,000 yards of total offense. It was his redshirt junior season that made him a legend, however. Mariota was unstoppable as he threw for 4,454 yards, 42 touchdowns and four interceptions while rushing for 770 yards and 15 scores as well. He won the Heisman and led Oregon to a 13-2 season that culminated in a BCS National Championship Game loss to Ohio State.

In three years, Mariota became Oregon’s all-time leader in virtually every passing category and in total offense. That led to him being drafted No. 2 overall by the Tennessee Titans. However, once in the NFL, his dynamic playmaking seemingly disappeared. Maybe it was coaching, maybe it was his own conservative mentality. But whatever the reason, Mariota’s time with the Titans ended in 2019 as he was benched midseason.

He signed with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2020 but it would take a remarkable turnaround for him to end up meeting the hype that surrounded him coming into the league.