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John Gambadoro
special for azcentral.com
Jun. 16, 2003 10:54 AM
The names roll right off your tongue. Andre Wadsworth, Tom Knight, Leeland McElroy, Johnny Rutledge, Kelly Stoufer, Chuck Levy, and the list goes on and on and on. All Arizona Cardinals draft choices. All busts.
But when the Thomas Jones era officially came to an end on Friday after the Cardinals traded him to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for wide-receiver Marquise Walker, the reality set in. Of all the Cardinals busts, none has been bigger then Jones.
Sure, you can make a case that Wadsworth being drafted higher, No. 3 overall in 1998, was a bigger bust. But I'll always believe that Wadsworth would have been a good player in this league had he not gotten injured.
Knight was never worthy of the No. 9 pick in 1997, but he played five years here, and although injury prone throughout all of them and non-productive, at least he was never as big a problem as Jones. Stouffer was a flat-out bad pick and he never panned out after the Cardinals traded him to Seattle, where he lasted just a few seasons. McElroy, Rutledge and Levy were second-round picks, and though busts, it lessens the pain a little when you are not paying out huge signing bonuses like the Cardinals did to Jones, who took in $5.4 million before ever playing an NFL game.
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special for azcentral.com
Jun. 16, 2003 10:54 AM
The names roll right off your tongue. Andre Wadsworth, Tom Knight, Leeland McElroy, Johnny Rutledge, Kelly Stoufer, Chuck Levy, and the list goes on and on and on. All Arizona Cardinals draft choices. All busts.
But when the Thomas Jones era officially came to an end on Friday after the Cardinals traded him to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for wide-receiver Marquise Walker, the reality set in. Of all the Cardinals busts, none has been bigger then Jones.
Sure, you can make a case that Wadsworth being drafted higher, No. 3 overall in 1998, was a bigger bust. But I'll always believe that Wadsworth would have been a good player in this league had he not gotten injured.
Knight was never worthy of the No. 9 pick in 1997, but he played five years here, and although injury prone throughout all of them and non-productive, at least he was never as big a problem as Jones. Stouffer was a flat-out bad pick and he never panned out after the Cardinals traded him to Seattle, where he lasted just a few seasons. McElroy, Rutledge and Levy were second-round picks, and though busts, it lessens the pain a little when you are not paying out huge signing bonuses like the Cardinals did to Jones, who took in $5.4 million before ever playing an NFL game.
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