“Talent” is widely considered to be a key determinant of high achievement. Nevertheless, there is considerable disagreement about its definition and, equally important, about its effects. The current investigation explores conceptions of talent and their motivational consequences, the role of talent in predicting expertise, and circumstances in which situational affordances may be misconstrued as individual ability. Chapter 1 includes eight studies of human resource professionals and lay people (total N = 9,966) exploring “talent terminology” in the workplace. When ability was framed as “talent” (versus its most common synonym, “skill”), participants adopted more of a fixed mindset, were more likely to endorse quitting as an appropriate response to failure, and were more likely to recruit new employees rather than develop existing ones to improve organizational performance. Chapter 2 is a comparative meta-analysis, with 41 effect sizes from K = 16 studies with a total of N = 1,393 participants, revealing that deliberate practice hours explain roughly twenty times more variance than measures of cognitive ability in board game expertise (chess, Scrabble, Baduk). Chapter 3 includes two studies using archival performance and salary data from N = 120 NFL quarterbacks, as well as survey data from N = 64 NFL talent evaluators (e.g., executives, coaches, scouts), providing evidence that NFL organizations overlook situational determinants of quarterback performance. Despite evidence that “yards-after-the-catch” (YAC) statistics are driven by situational influences (rather than quarterback ability), quarterbacks with higher YAC statistics are paid millions of dollars more per year. Survey results confirm that NFL talent evaluators attribute a substantial portion of YAC statistics to quarterback ability and believe quarterbacks with higher YAC should earn more money. Collectively, these chapters illuminate potential limitations of “talent” and suggest alternative explanations for high achievement.