The NFL Draft is one of the most hopeful weekends on the NFL calendar. It’s the only time of year when all 32 teams and fanbases can feel optimistic. If your team gets it right next weekend, it can completely change the outlook of your team in 2026. But if they get it wrong, it could set them back multiple years.

Most players who go in the first two rounds turn out to be at least solid players. Some will become All Pros one day, while others will just be solid starters. But there’s a small portion of those top-64 players that never pan out and end up out of the league before their rookie deal is even up.

I like a lot of the round one and two prospects in this draft class, but there are a few that I think are guaranteed to bust. Here are five guys slated to go in the first two rounds that could be out of the league by 2030.

Ty Simpson, QB, Alabama

Some people are high on Ty Simpson, and some people are very low on Ty Simpson. I am very much on the low side, and I don’t really understand the hype. He’s very accurate and smart, I’ll give him that, but he doesn’t have an elite arm, and he played very, very poorly down the stretch.

Simpson’s first nine games were pretty good, but when it got to crunch time, he really struggled. Just look at how he played in his first nine games compared to his last six. When the lights got brighter and Alabama needed him to step up, he just didn’t.

For those of you saying, “Well, the competition got tougher, of course his numbers dropped,” yeah, it did. But the competition is only going to keep getting tougher once he gets to the NFL. That’s not an excuse for playing worse down the stretch.

Another reason I’m very low on Simpson is that he’s started 15 games in his college career. Typically, NFL scouts want to see 25-30+ college starts to feel good about a prospect. There’s a direct correlation between the number of college starts you have and how good you are early in your career, so let’s take a look back at how many starts every quarterback drafted in the first round of every draft since 2020 had coming into the league and how their career has looked thus far.

In 2025, two quarterbacks were selected in the first round: Jaxson Dart and Cam Ward. Dart was a three-year starter for Ole Miss and played in 45 games, and he’s looked pretty good so far. Ward was also a three-year starter at Washington State and Miami, and if you’re not just a box score watcher, you’d know he had a really good rookie season and showed a lot of flashes.

In 2024, we saw six quarterbacks go in the first round, and all of them had 25+ starts. Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels, Drake Maye, and Bo Nix all started 25+ games in college and all look like franchise quarterbacks. The only guy in this class who had 25+ starts and hasn’t looked great is Michael Penix Jr., who has suffered two injuries early in his career, and J.J. McCarthy, who many doubted heading into the draft anyway. So far, we’re 6-for-8 on guys with 25+ starts panning out.

In 2023, Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud both came into the draft with two years of starting experience and went first and second overall. They’ve both had their struggles early in their career, but they’ve also flashed at times and are still starters heading into year four. As for Anthony Richardson, who made 13 starts in college, he is basically the third-string quarterback for Indianapolis.

Kenny Pickett was the only quarterback selected in the first round of the 2022 draft class, and while he had plenty of starting experience, he did not pan out in the league. But to be fair, not many people thought he should’ve been a first-rounder; Pittsburgh just panicked and made a bad pick.

Of the four quarterbacks drafted in the first round in 2021, Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson were the only two who met the 25+ start threshold. Lawrence has gone on to become a high-end starter, while Wilson is a journeyman backup trying to get another chance. The other two quarterbacks taken in round one, Justin Fields and Mac Jones, both started fewer than 25 games and are no longer starters in the league.

Finally, in 2020, four quarterbacks were taken in the first round of the NFL Draft: Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Tua Tagovailoa, and Jordan Love. Burrow, Love, and Herbert are all still starters in this league, and started over 25 games in college. Tua, the only one no longer starting in the NFL (or maybe he is with Atlanta? Who knows, but he certainly isn’t as good as the others), did not meet that threshold with 24 starts.

So let’s tally them all up. Of the 20 quarterbacks taken in the first round since 2020, 16 of them have started 25+ games, and 11 of them are what I would consider a “hit” (and if you consider Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud a hit, it could be 13 of 16). That’s a 68.8 percent success rate. Of the four who didn’t start 25+ games in college, only one of them (Tua Tagovailoa) has a chance to start next year, and it’s only because Michael Penix might not be ready for the start of the season. That’s a 0 percent success rate (0r 25 percent if you’re convinced Tua wasn’t a miss).

It’s clear that NFL teams don’t like to take quarterbacks with under 25+ starts in college, and when they do, they pretty much never work out. Tua is the only one whose had a somewhat successful NFL career, but the Miami Dolphins gave up on him for a reason. The other three – Zach Wilson, Kenny Pickett, and Anthony Richardson – aren’t even considered good backups.

Could Simpson be the exception to this rule? Sure, but I just don’t see that happening.

Keldric Faulk, DE, Auburn

If you’ve watched any of our live videos over on EssentiallySports’ YouTube channel, you’ll know I’m not a fan of Keldric Faulk. I never understood the top-10 hype early in the draft process, and as we get closer to the draft, others are starting to agree with me. Most still believe he’ll go in the first round, but he probably won’t be selected until the 20s.

I get the appeal to Faulk. He’s 6-foot-6, 276 pounds, giving him the ideal frame for a modern-day defensive end. He’s also a pretty dang good athlete, running a 4.67-second 40-yard dash at his pro day to go with a 35-inch vertical and a 9-foot, 9-inch broad jump at the NFL Combine. However, for a guy who is relying on his athleticism to get him drafted, those numbers aren’t fantastic by any means.

When I say he’s relying on his athleticism to get him drafted, it’s because he didn’t produce in college. His sophomore season was pretty good, finishing with 45 pressures and seven sacks, but he completely fell off the map this year and finished with just two sacks. I know he plays in the SEC, so he faced some really tough competition, but the NFL is tougher, and how many guys are getting drafted in the first round with 10 career sacks? Not many.

As a New Orleans Saints fan, I’ve seen this play out many times. Marcus Davenport and Payton Turner were two pass rushers the Saints drafted based on their athletic upside, and they never panned out (and this was during their Super Bowl window). I just can’t get those two guys out of my head when thinking about Keldric Faulk. Maybe he actually reaches his potential, but if he doesn’t, whoever drafted him is going to look very stupid.

Cashius Howell, DE, Texas A&M

Cashius Howell is quite the opposite of Keldric Faulk. He’s a good athlete, but he actually has the production to match. Over his last three seasons in college, Howell has logged 25 sacks, including 11.5 in 2025 as a member of the Texas A&M Aggies. He proved that his production at Bowling Green wasn’t a fluke and that he can compete against some of the best talent in the country, but if you’re concerned about Rueben Bain’s arms, you need to be terrified of Howell’s.

Howell’s arms measured in at 30 1/4 inches at the NFL Combine. Say what you want about combine measurements always being shorter than pro day measurements, but he measured in with the shortest arms of any defensive end at the NFL Combine since at least 1999. Yeah, it’s that bad.

You want to know some of the names of the other edge rushers with sub-31-inch arms at the combine? Nate Williams, Sutton Smith and Tyree Johnson (and Rueben Bain, of course). That’s the end of the list. If you know who any of those players are, it’s probably because you watch college football, because none of them amounted to anything in the NFL.

I hate to be the guy who’s worried about arm length, because I think Howell and Bain could be good players in the league, but if you draft either one in the first round, you’re counting on them being complete outliers. Nobody has ever succeeded as an edge rusher with that short of arms, so I’m not counting on Howell being anything special in the league.

Peter Woods, DT, Clemson

The Peter Woods hype has died down significantly since the start of the college football season, but I don’t get why some people still think he should be a first-round pick. What did he do last year to be worthy of that title? Absolutely nothing. And on top of that, he was supposed to be this athletic freak, but he didn’t even test well.

In 2025, Woods totaled 30 tackles, 14 pressures, and two sacks. That is EXTREMELY underwhelming for a guy tabbed as a top-five pick entering the season. He earned a 65.4 pass rush grade and took a step back as a run defender, missing nearly 20 percent of his tackles and seeing his run defense grade drop from an 87 in 2024 to a 74 in 2025.

Even after his disappointing season, people were still high on him because of his athletic traits. But he didn’t perform at the combine, opted out of the 40-yard dash at his pro day, and recorded a 29-inch vertical and an 8-foot, 8-inch broad jump. He’s also only 6-foot-2 and weighs 302 pounds. You can’t be 300+ and expect to be a terrific athlete.

No part of me wants anything to do with Peter Woods in this draft. I’d easily take Kayden McDonald and Lee Hunter over him, and if Caleb Banks wasn’t so hurt, I’d take him too.

Zion Young, DE, Missouri

Zion Young is getting a lot of round one hype right now, but I think the consensus on him needs to be much lower. I think he could be a fun day two prospect, but I don’t believe he should be a top-32 pick.

Young was a late bloomer. Over his first two seasons at Michigan State, he racked up 2.5 total sacks. Then, in his first year at Missouri, he only recorded 2.5 sacks. It wasn’t until the senior season that he really broke out, but he still finished 2025 with just 6.5 sacks. That’s 11.5 sacks over four years, which doesn’t exactly look great to NFL teams.

Young also isn’t as good an athlete as someone like Keldric Faulk. He ran a 4.77-second 40-yard dash at his pro day, which would’ve ranked 15th out of 19 edge rushers at the combine. He didn’t test in the vertical or broad jump at his pro day, but he has never been labeled as a great athlete.

Young also had some legal trouble. He was pulled over for driving under the influence and speeding in December 2025, so that’s just another blemish on his record.

I’m not as low on Young as the other four guys on this list, but I don’t believe he’ll ever live up to his first-round price tag, if he’s taken that high.