Top 10 Draft Busts In Saints History: #6 Joe Campbell

Starting April 4th and continuing through April 29th, Canal Street Chronicles will be counting down the top 10 draft busts and then the top 10 draft successes in Saints history. Feel free to to use these posts as a springboard for discussion about how awful or how great each draft pick turned out. 

Top Draft Bust #6: Joe Campbell

It's 1977, the Saints were drafting in the top 10 for the third straight year and grabbed their second bust in that time (Chuck Muncie kept this from being an 0 for 3). Mr. Campbell was taken with the 7th overall pick as a defensive end from Maryland. Campbell would play in 14 games but started only six of them. He played a full 16 game season in 1978 before becoming a backup for the rest of his short career.

After his three years with the Saints, he was traded midway through the season to the Raiders to finish out the year as a Raider. Because Oakland won a Super Bowl in 1980 (a foreign concept today), Campbell was able to walk away with a ring despite being a huge disappointment for the Saints. Of course, he was then traded midway through the 1981 season to the Bucs. He would leave football after the '81 season to go back to a normal life but he helped define the 70's for the Saints, a period when the team was just one step away from success but couldn't find that step.