Truncated Careers

The Gipper

Zombo said:

Bert Jones

Chris Miller

Zombo

I thought about Bert. He did play 10 years, but yes, he could have gone longer without injury.

But Chandler played for 17 years. Injuries may have taken some of the zip off the ball, but he still had a long career.

Heck....you could put Kosar in here. He only had a 12 year career.

But, for this, I was thinking of people who were cut off in their prime....or who showed promise before reaching their prime.

Zombo

Miller, not Chandler, retired when he was 30 from concussions.

Zombo

The Gipper

Probably the best that never was:

The Gipper

Maybe the best next to Jim Brown:

The Gipper

Gosh, don't those uniforms look familiar.

The Gipper

The Big Kat suffered a neck injury early on that required fusion surgery, and that ended his career. I think he would have been a Spielman/Urlacher type player.

Browns149

@the-gipper said:

Defenders that I can think of:

Dimitrious Underwood

Steve Emtman

Gaines Adams

Courtney Brown

Andy Katzenmoyer

Don Rogers

Sean Taylor

Eric Turner

Offensive Linemen:

LeCharles Bentley

John Clay

Levi Brown

Notice how a lot of this seems to affect the Browns more than anyone? (or, more likely, I am just more familiar with the Browns players)

Maybe the biggest bust ever

Tony Mandrich

Browns149

@browns149 said:

Maybe the biggest bust ever

Tony Mandrich

I forgot

Ryan Leaf

The Gipper

@browns149 said:

Maybe the biggest bust ever

Tony Mandrich

I am trying to deal here with guys whose careers were cut short with injuries, not guys who were busts because they just sucked.

Besides, Mandarich actually had a fairly lengthy, though maybe not spectacular career. Leaf, Russell would more like fit that vein.

Browns149

@the-gipper said:

I am trying to deal here with guys whose careers were cut short with injuries, not guys who were busts because they just sucked.

Besides, Mandarich actually had a fairly lengthy, though maybe not spectacular career. Leaf, Russell would more like fit that vein.

Then why do you have Don Rogers, or Sean Taylor, or Eric Turner. They all died of non-football stuff

The Gipper

@browns149 said:
Then why do you have Don Rogers, or Sean Taylor, or Eric Turner. They all died of non-football stuff

Yea. They died. Death = injury. I didn't say it had to be a football injuy. So did Ernie Davis, Joe Delaney, Gaines Adams and a couple of others perhaps...non football issues.

The guys you referenced didn't die or get injured. They just sucked. See the difference?

The Gipper

Yes, death is a reason that one's career can be truncated:

Ernie Davis died of Leukemia

Gaines Adams died of heart failure

Joe Delaney drowned

Sean Taylor was shot

E-Rock died of intestinal cancer

Rogers died of cocaine overdose

Korey Stringer died of heat stroke

Pat Tillman died in action

Derrick Thomas died of an embolism from a car accident

Jerome Brown died in an accident

David Overstreet died in an accident

Chris Henry died in an accident

Don Fleming died of electrocution

Big Daddy Lipscomb died of a drug overdose

Brian Piccolo testicular cancer

Corey Smith was lost at sea

Marquis Cooper was lost at sea (in same incident with Smith)

So, yea, death counts.

Mark O

@the-gipper said:
How about WRs/TEs. Can't think of many. Perhaps K2 could fit here. Anyone else?

No one knows how good he could've been in the pros but Patrick Rowe was very very good at San Diego State and never played for the Browns.

nickers

Darrian Connor..outside LB who was a bust for the falcons ...

Browns149

Sucking can ALSO truncate ones career.

ballpeen

Bo Jacksons career may have been cut short, but it was long enough to sustain the legend....Bo was as good as it gets in a couple of sports.

miktoxic

@ballpeen said:
Bo Jacksons career may have been cut short, but it was long enough to sustain the legend....Bo was as good as it gets in a couple of sports.

and he also got out of the game before they started testing.

talk about a steroid freak.

hoorta

WR- I even mentioned it before- Lawyer Tillman.

miktoxic

there was a WR who was in his prime and played a game at the old philly stadium (whose turf was the worse in the league...carpet over concrete) caught a ball up in the air, came down, landed and blew out both knees.

anyone remember that and who it was?

googled it:

5. Wendell Davis, WR Chicago Bears

Davis is the one guy on our list whose injury actually occurred during a play. While running deep on a pass route at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium in 1993 in a contest between the Eagles and Chicago Bears, Davis blew out both knees at the same time when his cleats got caught in a seam in the Astroturf. The devastating injury forced him to miss the rest of the '93 season and all of 1994. He attempted a comeback with the Indianapolis Colts the following year, but never made it into another NFL contest.

EmporerGhoolie

@the-gipper said:

With all of this injury talk, I began to thinking about various players whose careers really were vastly curtailed by injuries. These are the "what coulda" been guys.

Start with this list:

Jahvid Best

Chris Beanie Wells

Curtis Enis

Robert Edwards

KiJana Carter

Blair Thomas

Marcus Dupree

Bo Jackson

Rickey Bell

Duane Thomas

and finally these two:

Joe Delaney

Ernie Davis

What do you think coulda/shoulda been with any of these guys? And can you think of other RBs?

Ernie Davis' career was cut short by Leukemia, not by an injury.

Ernie Davis would have turned Jim Brown into a second team player. He was bigger, faster and more versitile. The decision to draft him was what initiated Jim Brown's campaign to get Paul Brown fired. What PB did regarding Bobby Mitchell was indeed enough to cuse his firing.

But I thought, you said in another post that you didn't like living in the past............ This entire topic is based in the past.