Trent Richardson might be the biggest bust in recent memory. QBs get all the love and it’s hard to understate the whale that was JaMarcus Russell for recent busts but I think Trent might have an argument. Everybody thought highly of him, many saw him as the next Peterson. Even the few people who recognized that he played behind a great line still thought he’d be great. The Browns traded up to get him at #3, swapping places with the Vikings to get him ahead of Tampa.

He wasn’t awful his first year but he certainly wasn’t what we expected him to be. There were injuries that kept him off the field for a lot of his first season. Then the Browns traded him. I remember laughing at the Browns being the Browns, trading a first round #3 overall pick to the Colts for what would presumably be a later first round pick than what they used to get Trent. Then it turned out to be one of the Browns smartest moves this decade and Indy looked foolish for picking him up, as Trent sucked. His first carry in the playoffs against the Chiefs was a fumble. He spent most of the season stuck behind Donald Brown.

Last year he couldn’t even beat out old glass ankles Ahmad Bradshaw. I love Bradshaw to death but there’s no way a #3 overall pick should be easily the lesser choice on a broken old RB like Bradshaw is. When Bradshaw inevitably got hurt, Trent managed a whole game and a half before getting benched for some 6th round dude named Dan Herron. He didn’t play in the playoffs because he didn’t inform the team of a family emergency he skipped town for.

The Colts cut him and he got snatched up by the rebuilding Raiders, who greatly struggled with the run last season. He got 600K guaranteed money for it. He got released yesterday. According to their website, as of time of this writing, there are still 6 RBs on the Raiders roster. That number will shrink by next week. Trent wasn’t even on the bubble.

His NFL tenure is marred by jokes and screenshots of him having literally no vision and missing gaping holes, and not being the hard hitting monster he was at Bama. All the criticism we laid at Eddie Lacy coming out (He just played behind a great line!) that dropped him into round 2 turned out to be the criticism we should have laid at Richardson’s feet, as Lacy is actually as advertised.

Trent might get picked up soon by somebody, but really, it looks like he’s toast. You don’t get cut from a RB roster like the Raiders current one if you have promise. I think he’s the biggest bust in the past 5 years. I think he belongs in the discussion for the last decade.