Eight games are not nearly enough to determine a bona fide bust.

But when a supposedly elite pass rusher has only 3½ sacks at the season’s halfway point on a defense ranked near the bottom of the league in yards allowed after signing a six-year, $100 million free-agent contract, eyebrows can’t help but be raised — especially when the eyes below those brows see a player who does not appear to be giving his all 100 percent of the time.

Say hello to two-time Pro Bowler Mario Williams, an enigmatic player who has fallen significantly short of filling the bill for a Buffalo team that paid a fortune for his services after the former first overall pick of the Texans set a franchise record with 53 sacks in six seasons in Houston.

Expected to be the centerpiece of a dramatically upgraded defense, Williams has instead been the center of the kind of negative attention one would expect on a team that has not met most close league observers’ expectations.

“Based on our callers — and take that with a grain of salt — the predominant opinion is that he’s a bust, and that the Bills didn’t do their homework,” Howard Simon, a talk show host on WGR 550 Sports Radio in Buffalo, told PFW prior to Week Nine. “There are questions about his work ethic. People call in and say they focus on him during games and that he takes plays off. (Fans are) beginning to think that (the Bills) didn’t examine that he doesn’t have the desire, (the) passion to get better as a football player.

“That’s a big worry.”