Alabama football national champions labeled biggest NFL draft busts

The 2026 NFL Draft begins Thursday night in Pittsburgh, and Alabama football will look to extend its streak of at least one player taken in the first round of the draft to 18 consecutive seasons when the festivities get underway. Like five-star recruits, not all first-round picks pan out. Some "can't-miss" draft prospects are big misses, and some players who fall to the middle and even late rounds can turn out to have lengthy and productive playing careers.

A few have even made the Pro Football Hall of Fame . It's the former that has USA TODAY Sports thinking about the biggest NFL draft busts of the past 50 years. On Tuesday, NFL analyst Nate Davis compiled a list of 50-plus players dating back to 1976 that he considers worthy of the dreaded "bust" label.

The list includes two former Alabama football national champions that played for the Crimson Tide under Nick Saban. Alabama football national championship QB named one of top 5 'NFL draft busts' Under Saban, Alabama saw all but a handful of starting quarterbacks taken at some point in an NFL Draft. That began with Greg McElroy going to the New York Jets as a seventh-round pick in 2011 and ended with Jalen Milroe going in the third round to the Seattle Seahawks last year.

(Milroe spent his final season under Kalen DeBoer. Only John Parker Wilson, Blake Sims and Jake Coker went undrafted among Alabama quarterbacks to start a full season under Saban. Former Tide quarterback Mac Jones, who guided Alabama to Saban's sixth and final national championship in 2020, was named a top-five draft bust by Davis.