The worst Chargers draft picks in team history

Check out which players the fans offered up on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, we asked you all which former draft picks of the Chargers you believe are the — or at least one of — the worst in franchise history.

As you all did for last week’s community discussion thread, you gave us some primo answers. Let’s go ahead and highlight some of our favorites:

Gates Fan 85

“My choice is Jason Verrett. He was injury prone in college, was injured when we drafted him, but did anyway based on “Potential”. I am so glad Telesco doesn’t draft based on potential anymore. He had one good season and was constantly injured the rest of his time with us. A very likeable player that everybody seemed to love, but could never get over the injury bug. Was very happy to send him to San Francisco.”

Marvy61

“The worst draft pick the Chargers ever made was 1971 Leon Burns!”

BoltFanInLV

“Jonas Mouton.”

NazToretta

“Excluding Leaf. Tie between Sammy Davis and Buster Davis, both had almost identically no existent careers despite being first round picks.”

“Shoutout to not having and single first round pick for 4 drafts straight between 94-97, trading them away for SECOND ROUND PICKS in current years drafts. Bethard really was not a very good GM for the Chargers.”

Exocet61

“Manti Teo? Craig Mager? Tay Cody? Leaf?”

“Take your pick.”

QuesaDiaz

“Gartrell Johnson??”

FiatBux

“So many stinkers, but the Chargers aren’t alone in this. The biggest bust is, of course, Leaf. I don’t want to pile on the guy—he had his troubles and he seems to have done a tremendous job accounting for them and moving forward. Further, I think the Leaf pick encouraged the organization to get out of the Vick pick which led to LT and Brees. Not too shabby.”

OCBoltfan

“Leaf I think is unquestionable, but if we’re talking about recent history and a guy that was a terrible pick because he was as durable as a popsicle stick figurine it would go to Jason Verrett.”

Charles Frenkel

“The ESPN documentary about the 1983 draft was interesting. Apparently Eugene Klein didn’t want to give Fouts what he was asking for, so he played with the idea of trading (some of) their several first round picks for the rights to Elway — only he wouldn’t give up their highest pick, which was in the top five, if I remember correctly. The conclusion was that Klein was never serious about drafting Elway; he was just putting pressure on Fouts. I’m glad Fouts eventually signed, but one can only wonder if they took a flyer on Marino with one of their three or so first round picks, though it would have meant that Marino would probably have sat for a couple of years. But at least he signed Fouts. He wouldn’t give Fred Dean or John Jefferson what they were asking for and so they wound up on other teams. I doubt they ever recovered from losing Dean, though they did replace Jefferson with Wes Chandler, essentially.”

Thank you to everyone who participated! We’ll be back next week with another community discussion!