Ricky Williams trade
 

I was watching the 'How They Were Built' on the NFC East on NFL Network the other day and they referenced the trade that sent us all of New Orleans picks for Ricky Williams a few years ago.. Who did we draft and where are they now?

Well, that was the year we drafted Champ Bailey. In the second round, we got Jon Jansen. Here's how the rest of the draft went down:

Bailey, Champ DB Georgia 1 7 (f/Chi)
Jansen, Jon T Michigan 2 37 (f/Chi)
Stimson, Nate LB Georgia Tech 4 107 (f/NO)
Smith, Derek T Virginia Tech 5 165 (f/Den)
Hall, Jeff K Tennessee 6 181
Alexander, Tim WR Oregon St. 7 217

After the second round, you can see how well we did. I'll bet none of those other guys are in the NFL now.

But I've heard that we got all of the Saints' picks for trading down too. So why do we only have six total picks? Could we have traded a few so that we could get 2 number one's in 2000? Maybe that's how we got Arrington and Samuels the following year.

I think we got all New Orleans picks that year, and their #1 the next year. We were worried someone ahead of us might pick Champ, so we then traded most of the picks we had got from them to move up from their #1 to the Bears #1 and draft Champ. The next year, we had our #1, Carolina's #1 (they signed Sean Gilbert when we franchised him, so we had their number #1 from the year before too, but I think we traded it for Brad Johnson), and New Orlean's #1. We traded our #1 and Carolina's #1 (probably something else too) to move up to the 49ers at #3 overallm and draft Samuels. We already had #2, from the Saints

The trade was for New Orleanse entire draft, and the next years 1 and 3. We packaged alot of it to move back up, but we ended up with the second pick in the draft for the next year. LaVar Arrington.

It's a damn good thing Cleveland picked Courtney Brown, huh?

Can you imagine being the man who made that call -- Brown over Arrington!?!

Man, I wish Ditka was still in the league.

No offense, but this trade was a selfish grab by Ditka to save his job, to the detriment of the organization.