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

In the late 1990s, Oregon football had not yet become a true, consistent force in the then-Pac-10 conference and wasn’t a team that was seemingly always winning double-digit games. Yet, quarterback Akili Smith helped to put the team on the map in his brief career with the Ducks, though what happened in the NFL was certainly not a great thing for the player or the program.

Smith toiled in minor league baseball for a few years before attending junior college for two years to begin his college football career. He ended up at Oregon for the 1997 season but didn’t immediately win the starting job. By season’s end, however, Smith led the team in pass attempts as he went 108-for-200 with 1,385 yards, 13 touchdowns and seven interceptions.

As a senior for the Ducks, however, Smith burst onto the national scene with a monster year. Not only did he get the team to an 8-4 overall finish but he became a household name. In that season, he threw for 3,761 yards with 32 touchdowns and only eight interceptions, which was good enough to earn him Co-Pac-10 Offensive Player of the Year honors. It also put him heavily on the NFL radar.

The Cincinnati Bengals hitched their wagon to Smith, selecting him No. 3 overall pick in the 1999 NFL Draft, the third quarterback taken in the class. Smith, unfortunately, never fully grasped the position at the NFL. He ended up only playing in 22 career games for the Bengals and overall, completing a minuscule 46.6 percent of his passes with just five touchdowns and 13 interceptions. He played in NFL Europe and the CFL but never reached the heights he did as a senior at Oregon.