Tom E. Curran • E-mail

Since 1999, the 10 players selected with the first overall pick in the NFL draft have collectively earned:

• Initial NFL combined contracts worth more than $533 million ($180 million of that guaranteed).
• One Super Bowl title.
• Seven Pro Bowl appearances.
• Zero All Pro honors.
• One federal conviction on “Conspiracy to Travel in Interstate Commerce in Aid of Unlawful Activities and to Sponsor a Dog in an Animal Fighting Venture.”

Only half of the 10 — Miami’s Jake Long, Oakland’s JaMarcus Russell, Houston’s Mario Williams, the Giants’ Eli Manning and Cincinnati’s Carson Palmer — are projected to be starters this season. None of those will come from the four men selected No. 1 between 1999 and 2002. Two — quarterback Tim Couch (1999) and defensive end Courtney Brown (2000) — have been out of the league since they were 27.

And now the Detroit Lions, the first team in NFL history to go 0-16, will try to buck the hit-or-miss history of the No. 1 pick.

On Saturday, they will make Matthew Stafford their official selection and proclaim that they’ve got their guy. A cornerstone player. A young man who, after having massive amounts of research, money and man-hours invested in checking out every nuance of his football and personal life, will be entrusted with the fortunes of a franchise.

Yet nobody will know for sure if he’ll be a star or an unmitigated disaster. After all that work, how can teams not make the right choice?

“It’s an inexact science,” said New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick. “It’s such a process but ultimately you have to put your chips on some number and that’s the one you pick based on all the information you have. There is no handbook on, ‘It’s this one thing [that makes a player worthy].’ It’s a combination of things.”

Special feature NFL draft busts — by school We put the spotlight on the big-time college football programs and the guys who stunk it up in the NFL. NBCSports.com

Even though there have been so many costly misses at No. 1, teams don’t just throw caution to the wind and guess.

Charlie Casserley was the general manager of the Houston Texans when they took defensive end Mario Williams No. 1 in 2006. This week, he detailed what went into that selection.

In the fall of 2005, when Williams emerged as a top prospect, Casserley and his scouting staff made calls to monitor the progress of Williams and other players at North Carolina State. The Texans watched Williams five times that season with an area scout, a cross-checker, a national scout, their college coordinator and then Casserley himself. Those visits included conversations with coaches, teammates and anyone else who could provide insight into what kind of person and player Williams was. The Texans were at Williams’ personal workout. They scoured his game tapes from 2004 and 2005 and did background checks. They brought him to Houston for a visit and an interview.

Convinced Williams had the talent and character worthy of a No. 1 pick, the Texans grabbed him even USC’s Reggie Bush and Texas’ Vince Young would have been glitzier picks.

And now? Mario Williams has emerged as a force. He’s coming off a Pro Bowl season. Neither Bush nor Young — who went second and third, respectively — have lived up to expectations.

But Casserley knows the other side, too. In 2002, the Texans’ first year of existence, he selected Fresno State quarterback David Carr with the No. 1 pick.

“In Carr’s case, he was coming in as the quarterback for an expansion team,” said Casserley, now an analyst for the NFL Network. “We had an offensive line built with (tackles) Tony Boselli and Ryan Young and neither one ended up playing for us (because of injury). So now, all of a sudden, you’re behind the 8-ball playing a rookie quarterback with an expansion team.”

Carr was sacked an NFL record 76 times in 2002. He’s now a backup with the Giants, for whom he backs up Manning, one of the top picks who panned out.

The most celebrated flameouts occur at quarterback. Since 1999, Couch, Carr, Michael Vick (a three-time Pro Bowl pick for Atlanta whose dogfighting venture now has him serving the end of a 23-month jail sentence), San Francisco’s Alex Smith and Oakland’s Russell were taken first overall and either went belly-up or appear headed that way.

Calling a do-over on the NFL draft Getty Images   Redoing 2006 Dan Pompei thinks Jay Cutler should've been the No. 1 pick, instead of Mario Williams. AP   Redoing 2005 If the Dolphins were smart, they would've drafted Aaron Rodgers, writes Gregg Rosenthal. AP   Redoing 2004 Tom Curran says Ben Roethlisberger was the best choice, not Eli Manning.

“We tend to throw out that taking a quarterback in the first round is a 50-50 proposition. It’s not even that,” said Brian Billick, former Ravens coach and also an NFL Network analyst. “When you go back and look … since 1990, there have been 43 first-round quarterbacks taken. By any measurement, no matter how lax or strict you want to be, 13 of the 43 were successful. That’s right at 30 percent. History will tell you this is a bit of a crapshoot. Now, if you’re the Detroit Lions, do you take that kind of risk?”

Stafford is believed by many to be the best quarterback in this draft. But there is no “can’t miss” attached to him.

Pressure? Teams try to ignore it.

“If you don’t, you probably shouldn’t be in the business because it’s going to affect how you think,” Casserley says. “You ignore the pressure and you ignore the money. Whoever you take is going to get a lot of money, so you can’t sit there and think you have to be right because of the money. You have to be right, period, not based on how many millions of dollars you’re spending.”

Billick says that’s easier said than done, especially when it comes to a struggling team such as the Lions.

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