Denver Broncos: 10 players to avoid in the 2021 NFL Draft

4. Walker Little, OT, Stanford

There was a point in time where Walker Little was being considered as the next great offensive line prospect coming out of the collegiate ranks.

He was the Pac-12 Co-Freshman Offensive Player of the Year in 2017 before earning first-team All-Pac 12 honors as a sophomore in 2018, but the 2018 season is where some of his issues began.

He missed the Stanford bowl game with a shoulder injury, then in the first game of the 2019 season, he suffered a season-ending knee injury.

After suffering a season-ending knee injury, Little understandably decided to opt out of the 2020 season due to COVID concerns as well as the potential that he could go out there and get hurt again, further taking shots to his NFL Draft stock.

Essentially, Little has been the college version of Denver Broncos right tackle Ja’Wuan James the past couple of years.

How do you invest a top-100 pick in that player? I don’t see how you can do it, yet that’s where he’s being projected.

Now, if you could look at Little as a potential Netane Muti type of risk/reward proposition sometime late on the third day of the draft? That’s another story entirely. But if you’re taking this guy in the top-100, you’re taking a player who hasn’t really showed you anything in almost three years, and even when he was playing in 2018, he was playing through a shoulder injury.

The medical concerns and time away from playing in games are a concern here, far too concerning for the Denver Broncos to invest one of their top four or five picks in.