re: Is the Russell Wilson acquisition going to go down as one of the worst of all time?

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Can never forget Ditka trading the entire 1999 draft (and a first and a 3rd in the 2000 draft) for Ricky Williams who only played for the saints for 3 years. And he stayed out of shape most of his time there.

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The sensationalism of “trading their whole draft for one player” caused a lot of hot takes against it at the time the deal was made. It subsequently gets brought up, but it’s really nowhere near the “worst” of all time.

Below is the list of the players selected with what the Saints gave up. There was an ESPN (?) article a few years back that actually went through the best potential players available at each pick (taken within 10 spots) the Saints could have taken that showed it still wasn’t bad.

Williams never became the star that was expected, but he did bring back two first rounders in a trade after three years which is fairly significant value.

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Traded to New Orleans 1999 first round pick (5th overall, Ricky Williams)[13] Traded to Washington[13] 1999 first round pick (12th overall, later traded to Chicago, used to select Cade McNown)[14] 1999 third round pick (71st overall, later traded to Chicago, used to select D'Wayne Bates)[14] 1999 fourth round pick (107th overall, used to select Nate Stimson)[15] 1999 fifth round pick (144th overall, later traded to Chicago, used to select Khari Samuel)[16] 1999 sixth round pick (179th overall, later traded to Denver, used to select Desmond Clark)[15] 1999 seventh round pick (218th overall, later traded to Denver, used to select Billy Miller)[15] 2000 first round pick (2nd overall, used to select LaVar Arrington)[13] 2000 third round pick (64th overall, used to select Lloyd Harrison)[13]

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