Editor’s note: This article was originally published by USA TODAY Sports and has been republished in its entirety below.
Part stock market, part casino, the NFL draft is a three-day (or yearlong, if you count all the legwork) exercise in weighing risk against reward. And the payoff — as well as the toll — of all 32 teams’ decisions won’t be entirely clear for years.
Of course, when forced to account for innumerate variables in weighing one prospect against hundreds of others, there’s no reasonable expectation of finding a “sure thing” in the draft. Every year, though, some players offer a more volatile range of potential career outcomes. And while some of those prospects have provided significant returns on their teams’ initial investments — think of Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, Seattle Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf or Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert — others have gone down as cautionary tales.
These 10 players could be the biggest boom-or-bust prospects of the 2021 NFL draft class: