If you had asked the average fan — and maybe even the average college football coach — who would be the best NFL player off the 2005 Colton High School football team, Allen Bradford probably would have been the clear choice.

Especially among fans.

Bradford, a bruising tailback and linebacker, was the centerpiece of a very good Colton team, coached by Harold Strauss, that finished 9-3.

Shareece Wright was Bradford’s speedy sidekick who played wingback and cornerback.

And then there was Jimmy Smith, receiver and cornerback. The clear third in the Colton hierarchy. The only one of the three guys who did not wear a boxing-style championship belt on to the field before the televised, Citrus Belt League-deciding game against Redlands East Valley, won 42-41 by REV.

All three of Colton’s guys were selected in the 2011 NFL draft, making Colton the only high school in the nation to have three guys go into The League that year.

But a decade-plus later, it is the “other” guy — Smith — who is one season into a four-year, $41 million contract with the Baltimore Ravens.

We often are forced to concede that the player considered The Man from a given prep team never actually made it big in the NFL … and that someone not recognized as being as prominent or as promising … ended up being the guy who made all the money.

When the three Colton guys were recruited out of high school, Bradford was the main target, with Wright not far behind. USC and Pete Carroll signed both of them, and this is when the Trojans were ultra-prominent.

Meanwhile, Smith was considered a fine player but not quite in their class.

He went to Colorado, a solid football school but nowhere near as prominent as were Carroll’s Trojans in the first decade of this century.

It was in college that the three were sorted out through the grind of daily practice.

Bradford? He turned out to be a little slow for tailback and perhaps too short for linebacker. He was recruited as a linebacker but moved to tailback as a freshman, and was quickly lost among the usual mob of USC tailbacks, back then. He did enough to be taken in the sixth (final) round of the draft by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Wright had established himself as a guy who might be an NFL regular at corner, and went in the draft’s third round, to the San Diego Chargers.

Smith, however, who at Colorado had developed into a big and physical cornerback who could still run with receivers … went in the first round (27th overall) to the Ravens (despite “off-the-field” issues), and remains there today, after signing the $41 million extension last year — which I noticed only the other day.

While in Baltimore, Smith has become one of the top cornerbacks in the NFL, and is paid accordingly. In addition to that $41 million he has coming ($21 million of it guaranteed), he apparently earned $7.5 million over the course of his four-year rookie contract.

Thus, he will leave the NFL with a minimum of $28.5 million, and as much as $48.5 million if he plays out his current deal — and more if he is still around for the 2019 season, when he will be 31.

Wright, 28, has made real money in the NFL. He apparently got $1.5 million in bonus money when he signed with the San Francisco 49ers, ahead of the 2015 season and probably made around $3 million in his half-season with the Niners and (after they waived him) the Ravens, where he was reunited with Jimmy Smith.

Wright, 28, apparently made $2.6 million in four seasons with the Chargers, so that’s about $5.6 million in the NFL, which is nothing to sneeze at. He is a free agent, and probably has another season in him, at least.

Bradford, the 2005 star at Colton?

If he doesn’t have a real job, he may need one soon.

His rookie contract was for four years and $2.1 million, none of it guaranteed, with a signing bonus a tick under $100,000. He pocketed the bonus, but didn’t make anything like that theoretical $2.1 million.

Tracking contracts for marginal NFL players is tricky. He has appeared in 19 games with four teams over five seasons, and he would have made the NFL minimum in those 19 games (based on a $430,000 season minimum, over 16 games), maybe something like $500,000 total, plus perhaps about $5,000 for every week he spent on the practice squad, which could be significant — about $250,000 if he did 50 weeks on the practice squad over the past five seasons.

So, something in the neighborhood of $850,000, ballparking here, which certainly puts him in the upper 1 percentile of earnings among his high school graduating class, at age 28, but the skills he honed in all those years of football probably will have marginal value going forward.

The odds of him making a sudden jump to regular appearances on Sundays, at 28, is not good.

Jimmy Smith, meanwhile, the complementary player to Bradford and Wright a decade ago, ought to be set for life.

That does not make Allen Bradford, in particular, any sort of failure. What it tells us is that NFL teams are made up of people with very special sets of skills, much more specific than those needed by a high school player, and often difficult to identify in a 17-year-old kid.

We just don’t always think that through.