It’s the question that probably every single NFL team owner outside of the “Show Me State” is asking their General Manager, or the guy in charge of drafting players from college: “How the heck did we miss out on drafting Patrick Mahomes?”
The Kansas City Chiefs trading up to take Patrick Mahomes, combined with the teams that passed on him in the 2017 NFL Draft, had a direct impact on the future of at least five NFL franchises (more on that in a second). But passing on Mahomes wasn’t the only mistake made in that Draft. There were many other teams who took a player at a certain position, which ended up looking a lot worse when you look at other players taken later at the same position. And some other picks were total misses, considering how teams had needs at other positions that could’ve been filled with better drafting.
We dive into all of those mistakes, and the ramifications of them, in our list of the 12 biggest mistakes from the 2017 NFL Draft.
Mistake: Houston Drafted RB D’Onta Foreman
With all due respect to Lamar Miller, running back is a position that the Houston Texans simply have not been able to consistently rely upon since the days of Arian Foster. As such, the Texans probably used the 89th pick in the 2017 NFL Draft on running back D’Onta Foreman from the University of Texas, hoping that the 2016 Consensus All-American, who ran for 2,028 yards and 15 touchdowns as a junior, would be the answer at the position for the foreseeable future. Instead, Houston watched Foreman struggle with a combination of injuries and maturity issues, forcing them to release him just two years after drafting him.