The NFL hires a few hundred new employees every year, but rookie contracts essentially serve as probationary periods for entry-level players.
While many will excel and eventually earn lucrative new deals, many more will flame out before they ever have a chance to become established NFL veterans.
Here, we'll look at several young players who have underachieved and are now in danger of having their once highly anticipated careers go up in flames.
Most players drafted in 2014 have already crashed or boomed, while it's too early to draw definitive conclusions about those who entered the league in 2017.