5 former Commanders draft picks who might be done in the NFL

To say the Washington Commanders have an inconsistent track record in the NFL Draft would be a comprehensive understatement. While we’re all aware of the team’s biggest successes over the years (Terry McLaurin, Jonathan Allen, Kendall Fuller, Morgan Moses, etc.), there’s a similar quantity of wasted picks.

The hope is the new era of Commanders picks — Chase Young, Jahan Dotson, Phidarian Mathis, Jamin Davis and Sam Cosmi, among others —  will help change the narrative. While that transition gets underway, Washington fans can begin saying their proverbial goodbyes to former picks who might be done in the NFL.

As is the case with most teams, this list of players includes former franchise greats and downright awful picks who make you want to pull your hair out.

It’s always sad to see players whom fans were excited about when they joined the team move on from the NFL, but it’s all part of the business. Aside from Tom Brady, who may never retire, no player is capable of out-running Father Time. In other troubling cases, however, some players write their own endings.

4 former Commanders draft picks who might be done in NFL

5 & 4. Derrius Guice/Bryce Love

Given they both play the same position and are long shots to play in the NFL again, Guice and Love share this spot. The former, whom Washington drafted in the second round in 2018, is actually eyeing a comeback after he last played in 2019 due to various knee injuries and a laundry list of off-field disturbances.

The list includes domestic violence charges, which resulted in a six-game suspension to start the 2021 season, two different women accusing Guice of sexual assault when he was a freshman at LSU and a third accusing him of taking a nude photo of her and sharing the picture around the Tigers’ locker room.

Guice is young for a 24-year-old RB given he’s logged just 42 carries, but there’s no telling if his knees are up to the challenge. Over a two-year span in Washington, he suffered a torn ACL, torn meniscus and a MCL sprain.

Love, on the other hand, never took a snap with Washington and that’s unlikely to change three years after he was drafted in Round 4 in 2019.

The former Stanford superstar suffered a torn ACL in his final college game and missed all of his rookie year. Love didn’t play a single snap in 2020 and the Ron Rivera regime cut bait with him right before the 2021 draft, begging the question of why he returned to school after he finished second in Heisman Trophy voting and won the Doak Walker Award as the country’s top RB as a junior in 2017.

Whether it’s a lasting effect of his ACL injury or an inability to make a proper transition from college to the pros (or both), Love’s NFL career might end before he’s ever appeared in a regular-season game. Pretty tragic stuff.