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Draft busts gone bad (1 Viewer)

Faust

Faust

MVP
Ex-NFL QB Leaf arrested on drug, burglary, theft charges

HELENA, Mont. -- Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf was arrested Friday in his Montana hometown of Great Falls on burglary and drug possession charges, police said.

The circumstances surrounding Leaf's arrest were not immediately clear. Great Falls Police Sgt. Dean Bennett, who confirmed Leaf's arrest, said Friday night that he had not seen a report detailing the allegations against the ex-football player.

Leaf was booked on felony charges of burglary of a residence and criminal possession of dangerous drugs, plus a first-time charge of misdemeanor theft, Cascade County Detention Center Officer Robert Rivera said.

Leaf was freed on $76,000 bond and is scheduled to make a court appearance Monday.

Leaf, a former standout quarterback for Washington State, was the No. 2 pick in the 1998 draft behind Peyton Manning. But Leaf flamed out as quarterback for the San Diego Chargers, gaining a reputation as one of the biggest busts in NFL history.

There is no phone listing for Leaf in Great Falls. A message left at his parents' house was not immediately returned Friday night.

Leaf released a statement through his publicist, Wendy Ogunsemore on Friday night.

"I've made some mistakes, and have no excuses," the statement read. "I am using the tools I've learned to move forward rather than backwards, and will be open to talking about the details in the days to come. I am confident that there will be further understanding when the facts are revealed, and feel very blessed for all of the support, especially from my friends and family."

Last year, Leaf had surgery to remove a benign tumor from his brain stem and later underwent additional radiation treatments.
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Ex-NFL WR Rogers facing arrest in Michigan

Charles Rogers, one of the biggest draft busts in NFL history, has yet to turn himself him on charges stemming from two Michigan arrest warrants, the Detroit News reported Saturday.

The newspaper reported, via WJRT-TV in Flint, Mich., that Rogers is charged with five misdemeanors from two separate incidents. Rogers' charges include making a malicious phone call and conspiring to commit a crime, and possessing marijuana, an open container of alcohol in a motor vehicle, and driving on a suspended license.

Rogers was the second-overall pick in the 2003 draft, but had only 36 career receptions for 440 yards with four touchdowns in three seasons with the Detroit Lions.
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Lol at rogers being a cant miss wr. Someone in my ppr league traded 3 firsts to move up to get him.

 
Have to wonder if Charles didn't have such a faulty collarbone if his drug habit and career would've been drastically different. I know he was 'red flagged' in college and at the combine for marijuana but if he didnt have so much free time from the injury if he would have controlled things better. My lord he was such a impressive athlete in college. At the college level I thought then and now he was the closest thing to moss I had ever seen.

Watching leaf almost single handidly comeback on us(big Michigan fan) in the rosebowl I never saw his implosion coming. His fiery outbursts in college and at San Diego look like Rivers alot. Those too even resemble each other on the field. Another what if is if that San Diego team he came to wasn't so awful( I know pick that is usually the case) would he have less pressure and handled things better. There were times you definetle seen his potential. He was like a more volatile Rex Grossman(good Rex, bad Rex) with 5x the tools. Follow up a purfect pass only 5 or so qb's in history could make with 4 mind boggling int's

 
'matuski said:
'beef said:
Lol at rogers being a cant miss wr. Someone in my ppr league traded 3 firsts to move up to get him.
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He had the tools, and looked pretty good out of the gates. What a waste.
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Exacty. Plenty of guys have the tools, yet every there are cant miss wrs.
 
Ryan Leaf. The poster child for "Tim Tebow is not even close to the worst QB ever to play the position"...and proving it over..and over..and over.

 
What a sad deal. I remember seeing a piece on Leaf a year or two ago where it looked like he had put the drug issues behind him and was making what he could out of life after what had happened to him. Sad relapse.

After seeing this thread title I started think I wonder what the RB are doing these days? Lawrence Phillips, Maurice Clarett, Bam Morris (not that big time prospect but had nice NFL success).

 
'fatness said:
'Raiderfan32904 said:
2 days after posting bail, Leaf arrested again today stealing drugs. :mellow:

My link
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Using Leaf's recent arrest stats (1 arrest/3days) he projects to about 93 total arrests in 2012, making him quite valuable in PPaR leagues.
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Small sample size. If you take out the one big week, he'll easily revert back to the mean. (especially if he's in jail). I mean, I hate to predict jail on anyone, but he is clearly jail-prone. Give me a more steady producer over someone who gets arrested in bunches all day.
 
'matuski said:
'beef said:
Lol at rogers being a cant miss wr. Someone in my ppr league traded 3 firsts to move up to get him.
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He had the tools, and looked pretty good out of the gates. What a waste.
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At least he didn't cheat with steroids.
 
'fatness said:
'Raiderfan32904 said:
2 days after posting bail, Leaf arrested again today stealing drugs. :mellow:

My link
Click to expand...
Using Leaf's recent arrest stats (1 arrest/3days) he projects to about 93 total arrests in 2012, making him quite valuable in PPaR leagues.
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Apparently M. LeShoure is right there as well. Leaf might have experience, but Leshoure is younger and wants it (weed) more, so I'd have to put Leshoure slightly ahead of Leaf (no pun intended), but they are clearly in the same tier.
 
Leaf was just like a million other college stars who didn't have NFL talent. Rogers was a sadder story, all the talent in the world just couldn't stay healthy & off the drugs.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
'adrenaline said:
Leaf was just like a million other college stars who didn't have NFL talent. Rogers was a sadder story, all the talent in the world just couldn't stay healthy & off the drugs.
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Leaf had NFL talent, just not NFL skill.Most of the guys that I'd assume you're lumping him in with (Wuerffel, Heupel, etc) were the opposite.
 
'STEADYMOBBIN 22 said:
Pretty sure Leaf's wrist being a disaster hurt his chances.
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His brain doesn't seem to work too well either. There are many people who don't play in the NFL or didn't make it or didn't have things pan out the way they hoped after coming out of college. Not all of them turn to drugs and crime. Just sayin'.
 
The Ryan Leaf story facinates me from the "scouting and prospect" perspective because this was a guy that had a good number of NFL decision makers and media saying was a "toss up" between him and Manning.

Of course there is no direct correlation, but every time I watch all these "sure fires" and "can't miss" prognostications, I temper it a bit. There is a scenario to support there are no guarantees with rookies coming into the league.

 
Ryan Leaf's twisting journey similar to that of other addicts

Lisa Olson

AOL FanHouse Columnist

Two summers ago, while visiting family in Montana, I pitched a column about Ryan Leaf’s recovery and healing. I love these kinds of stories, because as far as we think people have tumbled, and as big of jerks as they might have been at various points in their lives, I’ll always cling to the idea that humans can change.

I had run into Leaf at a charming downtown restaurant, and he said he’d be happy to talk because he, too, believed that who we were then doesn’t have to be who we are now. That phrase stuck with me, and I excitedly called my editor to describe what in my mind was the column’s opening scene.

Leaf, the quarterback who was selected No. 2 behind Peyton Manning in the 1998 NFL draft, had recently received 10 years probation after pleading guilty to eight felony drug charges in Texas, and was now rebuilding his shattered life in Great Falls, his hometown. He was in a 12-step program, attending recovery meetings, getting drug tested and speaking to teens about addiction.

Still, my pitch was turned down, the editor saying this was a story where we could too easily get burned.

When Leaf last spring had a benign tumor removed from his brain stem and later underwent eight weeks of radiation treatment to destroy what surgeons couldn’t eradicate, I considered revisiting that column, because this was a new twist that could perhaps explain at least some of his many issues. Could the tumor be at the root of his rage and addiction?

We’re only beginning to learn the weight of the struggles incurred by athletes who’ve been concussed or repeatedly hit in the head. After four ragged seasons in the NFL and a lustrous college career at Washington State, was Ryan yet another in the long line of players now paying a vicious price?

On my next visit to Montana I hoped to reconnect with him, to explore this snaking angle.

Now there he sits in a Great Falls jail after being arrested twice in the span of four days, the second time after he allegedly committed another burglary while on bail for charges that he broke into a friend’s home and stole prescription painkillers.

He’s gone from being a college stud … to mocked as one of the biggest busts in NFL history … to loving life out of the spotlight as West Texas A&M University’s volunteer quarterbacks coach … to being suspended for asking one of his players for a painkiller … to pleading guilty in Texas to felonies relating to fraudulently obtaining nearly 1,000 pills from area pharmacies in an eight-month span … to moving home near his parents and living amidst the Big Sky’s peace and tranquility … to signing a contract in 2010 to write three books that would be autobiographical and, presumably, inspirational … to wearing prison orange and appearing by video in his initial court appearance Monday on charges of two felony counts of burglary, two felony counts of criminal possession of a dangerous drug, two misdemeanor counts of theft and a probation violation.

That’s some fall and rise and fall and rise and fall, and plenty of addicts know the song well.

These addicts don’t resemble the scraggly, frightening souls who’d make us cross to the other side of the street during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s. But drug counselors and addiction specialists say the blight is just as deep, the vicious cycle of crime and collateral damage connected with the misuse of prescription drugs no less alarming.

“What most Americans don’t understand is that more people are dying from prescription pain medications than heroin and cocaine combined,” said Ben Levenson, co-founder and CEO of Origins Recovery Centers.

They could be our neighbors, the famous radio broadcaster, the Oscar-winning actor, our co-workers, our relatives.

Like all of them, Leaf deserves sympathy as he struggles to kick his demons, though there are plenty of folks mumbling they haven’t much compassion for someone who hasn’t always treated others with kindness, who lazily squandered his career and who has boasted about saving all of his gazillions and earning millions more from wise investments.

Why, there is former San Diego Chargers general manager Bobby Beathard, the man who selected Leaf as the second pick and approved Leaf’s four-year contract worth more than $31 million, telling USA Today: “His biggest robbery was me drafting him and him getting all the money from the team.”

Empathy doesn’t flow easily to a guy who admittedly made a habit of being a selfish narcissist.

In San Diego, Leaf lost 14 of his first 18 starts, was booed and benched and lashed out at anyone who dared criticize him. At 6-6, 240 pounds, his arm was staggeringly strong, but then came the third game of his rookie season when he completed 1 of 15 passes for 4 yards, had three fumbles and two interceptions in a 23-7 loss at Kansas City. His QB rating: 0.0.

The following day, he threw a profane fit in the locker room, and thus began the spiral. Quickly he went from a supremely physically gifted QB who ended Washington State’s 67-year Rose Bowl drought to the idiot returning for Homecoming and yelling in a Pullman bar, “I can buy all of you!”

Released by San Diego, and then Tampa Bay, and then Dallas, Leaf retired in 2002 because of a wrist injury. He re-injured it in early 2008, while coaching in the Texas panhandle, and started seeing as many as 10 different doctors for painkillers. He also swiped pain meds from injured A&M players, sometimes replacing the pills he took with medication to treat gout.

Eventually he was nabbed for burglarizing a player’s home—medication the only thing missing, a recurring theme—pled guilty, received probation and returned to Montana to begin anew.

He’d work on a friend’s ranch, helping to herd cattle or sweep out barns. There was plenty of fishing and golf, and summer evenings spent playing in the local softball league. But he injured his knee in an accident on the ranch, had surgery to repair his ACL, and last May began experiencing headaches, dizziness and blurred vision.

A benign tumor on his brain stem was removed, followed by radiation. His friends say the treatment made him nauseous, ill. He was due for a followup MRI at the end of March.

These are in no way excuses for his behavior, but they could be reasons that fill in some of the blanks. Leaf, 35, has traced his addictive personality to when he was teenager, and craved competition. That day we ran into each other in Montana, he told me about it briefly, about how he didn’t care who he hurt back then, but how he had worked hard at becoming a different, better person who could control his obsessions.

When he was arrested Friday, Great Falls police say they discovered in his golf bag oxycodone pills allegedly stolen from an acquaintance. Three days after Leaf posted a $76,000 bond, owners of a home on the city’s outskirts described finding a “tall man with an athletic build” wearing “shiny black loafers” inside their house.

The man said he had the wrong address and left, but they called police after discovering three bottles of prescription medication missing.

The GPS on Leaf’s truck may lead to proof that Leaf has broken into other homes over the 1 1/2 years—all in the quest for prescription drugs. During a search, 89 hydrocodone pills were found in the pocket of his bathrobe, and 28 more were discovered in his truck. They were different than the pills taken from the burgled home, according to authorities.

Leaf could be extradited to Texas for a hearing on whether to revoke the suspended sentence he was given in 2010, and then return to Montana to face the current charges. A prison term seems likely. Upon being arrested Monday, Leaf was described as being calm and not at all surprised.

“Like he expected it,” a member of the task force told me. They began investigating Leaf a month ago after receiving a tip that he had been picking up small packages at a Great Falls post office once or twice a week. He didn’t seem like an addict, this strapping man who’d smile and engage in a polite chitchat as he paid $500 or more for his parcel.

He looked like he could be a local ranch hand, or maybe the coach of the Pop Warner team.

Really, he just kind of blended in.
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leaf seems like he just cant break his addiction been there done that he needs to get into a program and have a sponsor around him basically all the time so that he can talk and be diverted when he starts feeling the creep and urge and hearing the voice call its sad and i wish him the best please get help brohan

 
ESPN980 did an interview with Ryan Leaf during Super Bowl week. I expected it to be junk but it was pretty interesting. The guy sounded like he had a good perspective on things and had his #### together. I guess it doesn't take long for things to fall apart.

Interview Link is on the left side of the page.

 
Ryan Leaf formally charged with four felonies

CBSSports.com wire reports

HELENA, Mont. -- Former NFL quarterback Ryan Leaf has been formally charged with four felonies on accusations that he broke into an acquaintance's home to steal prescription painkillers, then robbed a second home two days after being released from jail.

Cascade County Attorney John Parker charged Leaf with two counts of burglary and two counts of criminal possession of a dangerous drug in court documents filed Thursday but only available on Friday.

If convicted, Leaf faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on each burglary charge and five years for each possession charge.

An arraignment has not yet been scheduled. A message left with Leaf's attorney in Great Falls was not returned Friday afternoon.

Leaf is jailed without bond on a 30-day hold on charges that the Montana arrest violated the terms of his probation from a 2010 plea deal in Texas. In that case, Leaf was accused of burglarizing a player's home while he was a quarterbacks coach for Division II West Texas A&M and an investigation turned up that Leaf had obtained nearly 1,000 pain pills from pharmacies.

Leaf is likely to face the Montana charges before being returned to Texas on the parole violation charge.

"It's my understanding that Texas will wait until the Montana case has been resolved," Parker said.

The charging documents filed Thursday offer more details to the allegations against the ex-quarterback. They say that Leaf's arrest was the culmination of a monthlong investigation by the Central Montana Task Force that began when Great Falls postal workers tipped authorities that Leaf was receiving frequent packages and paying more than $500 cash on delivery for each.

Task force officers and Leaf's parole officer confronted Leaf on March 30. After initially denying receiving anything other than an herbal supplement from Florida, he eventually admitted that he received 10 packages, the charging documents said.

Authorities then searched Leaf and his truck, finding two pill containers in a golf bag with Leaf's name. One contained 28 oxycodone pills, while the other was empty with a prescription label in the name of an acquaintance of Leaf's.

Leaf first denied having any pills, the charging documents said. When told what was found in his golf bag, Leaf said the pills were from an old prescription. Asked about the prescription container for his acquaintance, Leaf said the man left the pills there when the two were playing golf together.

"Ultimately, Leaf admitted to stealing some oxycodone pills from (the acquaintance)," the charging documents read. "Leaf admitted to ingesting six or seven of the oxycodone even though he does not have a prescription for oxycodone."

Police concluded after interviews with the acquaintance and his housekeeper that Leaf entered the man's home the day before without permission and the two did not go golfing together.

Leaf was arrested and then freed on $76,000 bail.

Two days later, on April 1, two Cascade County residents told authorities they had returned home to discover a man inside their home, the documents say. The man said he had the wrong home and left. The couple called police after they noticed a drill missing, and later found three different prescription medications were gone.

The couple identified Leaf in a photo lineup and police went to Leaf's home to arrest him. They found another 89 hydrocodone pills when searching his home, the charging documents say.

Leaf, a former standout quarterback for Washington State, was the No. 2 pick in the 1998 draft, but his short-lived career earned him the reputation as one of the biggest busts in NFL history.

After his arrest in Texas, Leaf returned home to Montana and appeared to be turning his life around. He gave occasional motivational speeches and last wrote a book titled "596 Switch" about the 1997 season when he led Washington State to its first Rose Bowl in six decades.

Last year, Leaf had surgery to remove a benign tumor from his brain stem and later underwent additional radiation treatments.

Leaf's publicist released a statement from the ex-quarterback after his first arrest March 30 that said Leaf has "made some mistakes and have no excuses" but that he is "confident that there will be further understanding when the facts are revealed."
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Charles Rogers has warrant issued for his arrest

By Gregg Rosenthal

Around The League editor

An arrest warrant has been issued for former Detroit Lions receiver Charles Rogers after he failed to show up for a court appearance Wednesday in Michigan, according to MLive.com.

We told you in April that Rogers was arrested after reportedly threatening to kill his mother.

Rogers, who was draft No. 2 overall by the Lions back in 2003, told the court that he didn't have transportation to show up; his license is suspended. The judge in the case gave Rogers until the end of the day or a warrant would be issued. He never showed up.

Rogers reportedly threatened his mother to "blow her mouth out" and said he was willing to do "the time" he would face as a result.

Man, this story is so depressing we can't write any more about it.
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