Beanie Wells was nowhere near the prospect Trent was and is a terrible comparison in pretty much every way.
The list of RBs that had excuses to looks like a bust 21 games into their career and actually ended up being busts is a LOT longer than the list of RBs that had excuses to look like a bust 21 games into their career and ended up being great fantasy players. A LOT longer.
How many of those guys were top 10 picks? Here is every RB drafted in the top 10 in the past 15 years:
2010 - 1.09 CJ Spiller
2008 - 1.04 Darren McFadden
2007 - 1.07 Adrian Peterson
2006 - 1.02 Reggie Bush
2005 - 1.02 Ronnie Brown
2005 - 1.04 Cedric Benson
2005 - 1.05 Cadillac Williams
2001 - 1.05 LaDainian Tomlinson
2000 - 1.05 Jamal Lewis
2000 - 1.07 Thomas Jones
1999 - 1.04 Edgerrin James
1999 - 1.05 Ricky Williams
1998 - 1.05 Curtis Enis
1998 - 1.09 Fred Taylor
The vast majority of those guys were very good or at least had individual seasons that were very good. In fact, Curtis Enis is the only player out of this 14 man list who never rushed for 1000+ yards at least once in his career. Even a lot of the relative flops like McFadden, Ronnie, and Cadillac had at least one strong season. And well over half these guys had very strong, borderline HOF type of careers.
It's not by accident that a RB gets picked in the top 10. To go that high, you have to be special. Richardson wasn't just a top 10 pick, but a STRONG top 5 pick in a STRONG draft. I won't bother going back and copying/pasting all of the glowing scouting reports, but there wasn't an evaluator on the planet who didn't think this guy was a premier talent. If you're willing to toss that all aside because he's been relatively poor in the first 20 games of his NFL career (virtually all of which have been played in less than optimal circumstances -- injuries, bad running teams, new playbook), so be it. I think that's overly reactive given his pedigree. At this point I just don't find the evidence so damning that you should be jumping ship immediately. A player with Trent's background deserves a longer leash because of all the objective data points in his favor. As guys like Lynch, Reggie, Spiller, and Crabtree have shown in recent seasons, there is typically a good reason why a draft prospect comes into the league with a top reputation. As the saying in soccer goes, form is temporary, but class is permanent. With that level of talent, it is only a matter of time.
As far as T-Rich in the NFL, I definitely would've liked to have seen more good games and more big plays by now. On the other hand, the idea that he's shown nothing has no basis in reality. He looked quite good last year before his injury and really flashed his potential in the Cincinnati game early in the season.
I'm not seeing the sluggish plodder here. Could he be a bust when all is said and done? I guess it's possible, but I still find it unlikely that what we're seeing right now is the real Trent Richardson. In order to believe that, I'd essentially have to believe that he's the worst RB in the NFL because that's what it would take to be a lifetime 3.1 YPC rusher. He can't possibly be that bad, which leads me to think that what we're seeing now is probably a combination of many factors.
15 of his 20 games were for the Browns. I don't need to explain why that was a bad situation. He was also a rookie. Go look and see how Ricky Williams and LaDainian Tomlinson did as rookies on bad teams. Now Richardson is on the Colts. They have a much better QB than the Browns and a much better offense, but...they're not a good running team at the moment (one of the worst in the NFL last year with mostly the same team) and he's still being used in a limited capacity (much of his value IRL and in FF comes from his ability as a receiver, but we've hardly seen that facet of his game at all since he came to the Colts. Strictly a battering ram for the time being.) Oh, and if that wasn't enough, two of his first three games for the Colts came against the 49ers and the Seahawks. Not exactly dream opponents.
At this point I'm just rehashing the same arguments. Like every other player for whom the jury is still out, you're going to see different opinions based on where people stood in the first place and based on how fickle they are by nature. If you believed that Richardson was justifiably an elite RB prospect, it's likely that you can write off his struggles as the result of unfavorable circumstances. If you're more of a nervous owner and/or you weren't totally sold on Richardson in the first place, it's likely that you're going to look at the 20 games of 3 yards and a cloud of dust as definitive proof that he's a fraud.
These are the puzzles that FF owners have to solve. You can say William Green and David Terrell. I can say Ricky Williams and Michael Crabtree. You can say the odds are against a player becoming an elite NFL back if he's been so poor in his first 1+ season. I can say the odds are for any RB picked in the top 10 eventually becoming an impact player. We can go around in circles all week. I think I've made it clear where I stand. There might come a time to pull the plug, but I'm still holding.