Raiders first-round draft pick history: Revisiting past first-round mistakes, from JaMarcus Russell to Henry Ruggs originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
No NFL team is flawless when it comes to drafting. When taking a player in the draft, there are countless unpredictable factors that can be out of a team's hands. Injuries or off-the-field incidents can prevent players from even getting on the gridiron, while poor performance can simply be attributed to a player's shortcomings rather than a team's evaluation. The strategy of the draft is projecting how a team believes a player's career will unfold — and if it feels strongly about that individual, it will use a first-round pick on them.
Over the years, the term "bust" has come to describe players who were taken with a high draft pick but didn't live up to expectations. Just about every team has had some draft misses; it's virtually unavoidable over years of drafts. But for the Las Vegas Raiders, their top selections in the NFL Draft have historically brought a mix of bad luck, injuries, off-the-field issues and more.
The Raiders have picked some future stars — Khalil Mack, Tim Brown, Brock Bowers, Amari Cooper, Marcus Allen, Nnamdi Asomugha and Charles Woodson wound up being terrific selections — but for the most part, the franchise's first-round picks have not panned out.
Here's a look at the Raiders' history of first-round draft picks and the players who didn't live up to their high price tag.
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Here's a look at every Raiders first-round pick since 1970, the year of the AFL-NFL merger.
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The Raiders have had an extensive list of players that, in some fashion, did not live up to their first-round draft slot.
Taken as the No. 24 player off the board in 1986, defensive end Bob Buczkowski would total just 1.5 career sacks over four years in the NFL after his college career at Pitt.
In 2005, long after his NFL career was over, Buczkowski and his girlfriend were charged with running a prostitution ring out of his parents' basement from 2003-05. In 2007, he pleaded guilty to two counts of promoting prostitution and six counts of possessing and dealing cocaine, sentenced to 90 days of house arrest and three years probation.
Buczkowski died in 2018, with the cause being reported as an accidental overdose. His brain was donated to CTE research.
The Raiders went with Missouri offensive tackle John Clay with the 15th overall pick in 1987, but his NFL career would be short-lived.
Clay was a three-time All-American in college, but after his rookie season in Oakland, he was traded to the Chargers. The 1988 season with the Chargers was Clay's last in the league.
In 1991, the Raiders went after a quarterback in the first round, drafting USC's Todd Marinovich, the son of another Trojans legend, Marv Marinovich, who was a captain on the team's 1962 national championship squad and also played for the Raiders.
The 6-foot-4 quarterback, who was a hyped recruit coming out of high school, was taken ahead of Brett Favre in the 1991 draft. But he would only last in the NFL for two seasons due to his off-the-field issues — Marinovich dealt with substance abuse issues throughout his career, required to take frequent drug tests. And in 1992, the Raiders forced him into rehabilitation after he used a friend's urine for a drug test that showed heavy blood-alcohol content.
After spending time at a rehab facility, Marinovich then began using LSD after games in the 1992 season so it would not show up on drug tests; after failing another test, he went back into rehab. Before the 1993 season, Marinovich failed a drug test for marijuana, and he was suspended, then released.
Marinovich never returned to the NFL. He would go on to play in the CFL and AFL, continuing to deal with drug issues off the field. In 2025, he released a memoir titled "Marinovich: Outside the Lines in Football, Art, and Addiction."
A safety coming out of UCLA, then Texas A&M, Patrick Bates was drafted by the Raiders with the 12th overall pick in 1993.
He was a First-Team All-American in 1992 for the Aggies, but Bates didn't pan out in the NFL. He grabbed an interception with 16 tackles as a rookie, then added another 68 tackles in 1994, but Bates was eventually traded to the Falcons in 1996 and played just one season for Atlanta before being out of the league.