Edge Rusher Busts

Photo: USA Today Sports

A bust is a player who can lead you to a losing season. And the earlier you have to pick a bust, the more damage he can do to your team.

RELATED: See Edge Rusher Sleepers here >>>

To be clear, we define busts as players who we think will perform worse than most expect and be overvalued at their average draft position.

RELATED: See Defensive Tackle Busts here >>>
RELATED: See Defensive Back Busts here >>> 

Our staff recently gathered to offer up their busts for this season. Here they are.

Edge Rusher Busts from Gary Davenport

Will Anderson Jr., Houston

To be clear, this has nothing to do with Anderson’s talent—the 2023 Defensive Rookie of the Year has a bright future. But not only is he being drafted as though a second-year breakout is guaranteed, but both Texans edge-rushers are being taken inside the top-12 at the position with regularity. Danielle Hunter has shown he can do that. Multiple times. Including 2023. Anderson’s 45 stops and seven sacks last season landed him outside the top-40 edge-rushers in fantasy points. This isn’t drafting at ceiling. This is hope. And as the great thespian Mark Wahlberg said in the cinematic classic Deepwater Horizon, “Hope is not a strategy.”

Khalil Mack, LA Chargers

Mack’s 2023 season was a reminder just how outstanding a football player he has been, dating back to this game at the University of Buffalo (A game I’m old enough to remember vividly). Had the Chargers not been terrible last year, he might have won his second Defensive Player of the Year award. And now that he’s in the 100-sack club, he’s going to get fitted for a gold jacket. But he’s also a 33-year-old whose last double-digit sack season before last year came in 2018. To be clear, his DE2 finish last year won IDP managers leagues. But it’s not going to happen again. The Bolts have some big names on the edge. But counting on either (Looking at you too, Joey Bosa) as a weekly starter isn’t a wise choice in 2024.

Haason Reddick, NY Jets

The Godfather has gone from ranking Reddick inside the top-15 to drafting him in the King’s Classic Butkus Division at the Pro Football Hall of Fame because he fell far enough to roll the dice to out altogether after the latest news about the veteran edge-rusher. Yes, Reddick has double-digit sacks in four straight seasons—with three different teams. It was bad enough that Reddick’s 38 tackles last year were his fewest since his rookie year. But this mess in the Big Apple is—bad. Like holdout extending into the regular season bad. And even if he does report (or get traded) he has had exactly zero offseason reps to date. None. Hard pass. And sigh.