No. 1: Steve Little | Kicker |
|---|---|
St. Louis Cardinals | 1978 - First Round |
Yes, you read the table above correctly. The St. Louis Cardinals once spent a first-round pick (No. 15 overall) on a kicker. That kicker was legendary Arkansas Razorback Steve Little.
In school, at a time when kickers kicked field goals off of a small tee and could kick with footballs they had roughed up and treated to be kicking balls, Little was one of the best kickers the college game had seen. In fact, he nailed a record 67-yard field goal against Texas in 1975 and two years later was named an All-American.
Thus, the Cardinals thought they were getting a true weapon when they picked Little in the first round of the 1978 draft. But that proved to be a horrible mistake, and not just because they used such a high pick on a kicker.
In the NFL, Little was a disaster. Lasting only 33 games, he he was successful on only 48.1% of his field goal tries.
Even worse, he missed ten extra-point attempts on 51 opportunities. Remember, in that era, field goals were kicked from about the 12-yard line meaning those tries were less than 25 yards in length.
Unfortunately, Little's story took a tragic turn. On the day he was released in 1980, he was paralyzed in a single-car accident leaving him a quadriplegic until his death in 1999.
Little's legacy at Arkansas is cemented. However, in the NFL he will be remembered as one of the worst picks in NFL history as the Cardinals made the boneheaded move of wasting a first-round pick on a kicker. What's more, it proved to be a kicker who couldn't kick in the NFL. That's why Little goes down as the biggest NFL bust to ever come out of the Arkansas program.