Tree offers his retrospective on the Ricky Williams trade

N8toe said
Didn’t we get 2 number ones back when we traded him to Miami? Seems like we did. If I’m remembering correctly, it wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be considering the return we got a few years later.

Everyone going into that draft had Williams going as high as two to the Eagles who took Donovan McNabb. When the Colts took Edjarin James at 4 over Williams, Ditka's trade was accepted. The Saints had presumably somehow a larger offer to the Bengals at 3 who made the full Bengal by taking Akili Smith over the trade. Ditka was a drafting idiot so whomever would have gotten selected with the rest of our picks, they likely would have been failures. The biggest cost of trading up from 12 to 5 was giving up the #2 overall pick in the next year's draft that became Lavar Arrington. Ditka was fired at that point with Jim Haslett taking the head job. We took Darren Howard at the top of the second round that year.

I believe the year after that Deuce McCallister was projected to be a potential top 10 pick and dropped to the early twenties for us. Between Williams' injuries and the fact he was a Ditka pick opened a cracked door for Williams' exit. Saints traded Williams for two first round draft picks to Miami. (The second first was a conditional third that turned into a first after Williams had a 2,000 yard season or something crazy like that.) In 2022 we drafted Charles Grant with the first pick from the Dolphins. In 2003 we traded up with the second one of those picks and our pick to the Cardinals from the teens into the sixth pick and drafted bust among busts defensive tackle Jonathan Sullivan after Minnesota took Kevin Williams.

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]