Ravens Top 10 Worst Draft Picks Of the Last 10 Years: #8 Devard Darling
With The Draft upcoming, i thought it would be appropriot to take a look at some of the shining accomplishment and most glaring faults in terms of draft picks.
First I will be starting with The Ravens 10 worst draft picks. I have a few parameters here.
- No picks outside of round 3 were considered. It isnt really fair to call a seventh rounder a bad pick because he never played.
- No Current Starters, a starter cant really be considered a bad pick unless they were a high pick who hasn’t paned out(spoiler alert, the Ravens don’t have any of those).
Those arent shackling restraints, but because the Ravens draft so well in the first three rounds, this was actually a bit of a challenge. This list is riddled with career ending injuries(or series of injuries) and crazy improbable events that changed the career of the player involved.
One of those oft injured players was Davard Darling.
Darling was a WR from Washington St. who the Ravens took in the 3rd round of the 2004 draft. Darling was meant to be the Ravens new no.2 WR and they had high hopes of him possibly being a dominant player. He fell to the third round because his brother had died during a practice when he collapsed from exhaustion when the two twin brothers both attended Florida St.. Darling was not cleared to play by FSU officials after the tragedy because of his sickle Cell Anemia trait(which his brother also possessed and was believed to have played a part in his brothers death) so he transferred. Many teams were leery of the health issues.
Darling never lived up to his billing. After not playing for almost all of his first two years due to various injuries Darling finally got on the field in 2007 and scored his first career TD. He would only score three with the Ravens, and 4 in his NFL career. Darling is now out of the league.