In the wake of the recent injury to Tennessee Titans wide receiver Treylon Burks, who broke his collarbone attempting to reel in a training-camp pass from No. 1 overall pick Cameron Ward, it’s sad to think back on the ways his career has gone wrong.
Burks was acquired as a first-round pick by Tennessee in exchange for A.J. Brown, whom the Titans decided they didn’t want to sign to a contract extension. The thought was that Burks would be a ready-made replacement, and the team wouldn’t skip a beat.
That’s not how things worked out, obviously. Instead, the Brown-for-Burks swap looks like one of the worst trades in recent memory. And with that in mind, we wanted to compile an extensive but not necessarily exhaustive list of some of the worst trades this century.
Our only rule for the list was that the trade had to involve at least one active player at the time. So you won’t see, for example, the Bears trading up for Mitchell Trubisky or the 49ers trading up for Trey Lance on this list. But other than that, everything else was fair game.
Without further ado …
This is No. 1 with a bullet. There is no trade that comes close to being as disastrous as this one. And that’s true even before we get to the fact that Watson had been accused by two dozen women of sexual misconduct and the Browns cynically waited to finalize the trade until it was clear that Watson would face only civil, not criminal penalties.
The Browns surrendered first-round picks in 2022, 2023 and 2024, plus a third-round pick in 2023 and fourth-round picks in 2022 and 2024, in exchange for Watson and a sixth-round pick. They then gave Watson the worst contract in the history of sports — a fully-guaranteed five-year, $230 million deal. Watson has since played in just 19 of 51 possible games and has been arguably the NFL’s worst quarterback when on the field. And it’s hard to say that the Browns didn’t deserve that result.
Wilson was obviously a star for a long time in Seattle, but his final season there was marred by a finger injury and he struggled badly down the stretch. The Broncos saw fit to trade a haul for him anyway, sending first- and second-round picks in 2022 and 2023 and a fifth-rounder in 2022, along with Noah Fant, Shelby Harris and Drew Lock to Seattle for Wilson and a 2022 fourth-rounder.
Worse than the trade, though, was the contract. Denver handed Wilson a five-year, $245 million contract with $165 million in guarantees. Wilson was a disaster during his first season in Denver, then was mostly hidden within the offense by Sean Payton in Year 2 before the Broncos decided to cut ties and take on the most dead money in history by releasing him. They seem to have hit on Bo Nix as his replacement, but the two-years sojourn was with Wilson was epically bad.
3. Randy Moss to and from the Raiders
In March 2005, the Raiders traded first- and seventh-round picks, plus Napoleon Harris, to the Vikings for Moss, who by that point had already established himself as one of the best and most explosive receivers in history. He was unhappy in Minnesota, though, and the Vikings were fairly unhappy with him, and so the two sides cut ties.
Moss never looked anything like himself while playing for Oakland. He lazed his way through two seasons, catching 102 passes for 1,553 yards and 11 scores in 29 games. At 29 years old, it looked like he might be done … and then the Raiders traded him to New England for a mere fourth-round pick and Moss had one of the best wide-receiver seasons in NFL history, hauling in 98 passes for 1,493 yards and a league-record 23 touchdown grabs. He clearly had plenty left in the tank over the next few years.
The Raiders got robbed coming and going on Moss deals.
While we’re here, we might as well detail how the Pats stole Welker from the Dolphins for merely second- and seventh-round picks, then proceeded to turn him into one of the best slot receivers in football. He spent six years in New England, making five Pro Bowls and two All-Pro teams while catching 672 passes for 7.459 yards and 37 touchdowns.
5. A.J. Brown for Treylon Burks (and a third-round pick)
Brown didn’t really have superstar counting stats during his time with the Titans. In three years, he averaged 62 catches for 998 yards and 8 touchdowns. But a) he did that while missing a few games a year and averaged a 73-1,184-10 receiving line per 17 games; and b) he did it in one of the lowest-volume passing offenses in the league while racking up monstrous per-route and per-target efficiency stats. The Titans traded him thinking they were giving away a solid wideout whom they could immediately replace with a first-round pick in Burks.
Things … did not work out that way. Brown has continued to dominate in Philadelphia, translating his per-route stats over larger samples and averaging 87 catches for 1,343 yards and eight touchdowns per season and playing a key role in two Super Bowl appearances and last year’s Super Bowl victory. He’s been a Second Team All-Pro in all three of his seasons with the Eagles. Burks … struggled to even get on the field in the regular receiver rotation through his first three seasons and has been wholly unable to stay healthy. He just went on injured deserve for the third time in four years.
Adams was an excellent but somewhat limited player during his three years with the Jets, emerging as a powerful box safety who could defend the run, blitz and hit anything that moved within the 10-yard area of the line of scrimmage. He made two Pro Bowls and one appearance each on the All-Pro First Team and Second Team, though, and the Seahawks ponied up first-round picks in 2021 and 2022, along with a 2021 third-round pick, for Adams and a fourth-rounder in 2022.
Adams had a 9.5-sack season as essentially a blitzing linebacker during his first year in Seattle, but his effectiveness quickly waned and the contract the Seahawks handed him in conjunction with the deal looked like an albatross. It doesn’t help that two of the picks that they gave up became Christian Darrisaw (the Jets traded that pick to the Vikings) and Garrett Wilson, either.
Hopkins and then-Texans coach Bill O’Brien did not get along. And so the Texans chose their coach over their star wideout, trading him along with a fourth-round pick to the Arizona Cardinals for David Johnson (who was 29 years old at the time), a second-round pick and a fourth-round pick.
Hopkins proceeded to catch 115 passes for 1,407 yards and six touchdowns in the following season. He hasn’t been on quite the same level since then, but he’s averaged 59 grabs for 739 yards and six scores in the four seasons since that initial year in Arizona. Johnson, meanwhile, ran for 691 yards in his first season with Houston, then totaled 79 carries across the following two years before bowing out of the league.
Richardson was widely considered an elite running back prospect coming into the draft. He had run for 1,679 yards and 21 touchdowns in his final season at Alabama, finishing third in Heisman Trophy voting, and the Browns made him the No. 3 overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.
He then proceeded to average just 3.5 yards per carry in a little more than a year in Cleveland, but the Colts still somehow decided to give up a first-rounder in 2014 to secure his services. Richardson totaled a paltry 977 yards on 316 carries across his two seasons with the Colts before being unceremoniously released.
It’s entirely possible that Young becomes the superstar quarterback the Panthers thought they were getting when they traded up from No. 9 overall to No. 1 in order to select him. The “superstar” part doesn’t look very likely given the way his career has started, but stranger things have happened. Still, even if he becomes a good player, the trade to get him looks like an albatross at the moment.
Not only did the Panthers give up the No. 9 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft (which became star tackle Darnell Wright), they also gave up their first-round pick in 2024, which landed at No. 1 and became Caleb Williams, along with second-round picks in both 2023 and 2024, the former of which was traded to move up for Tyrique Stevenson and the latter of which was used on Luther Burden III. Oh, and they also surrendered D.J. Moore in the deal.
The Panthers essentially built an entire offensive skill-position corps for the Bears, and gave them starters at two premium positions in tackle and corner. Sheesh.
10. Daunte Culpepper to the Dolphins (and passing on Drew Brees)
In the winter of 2006, the Dolphins were deciding between which of two quarterbacks they wanted to bring in. There was Drew Brees, and there was Culpepper. Miami decided that it was too much of a risk to sign Brees with his shoulder issues, and traded a second-round pick to bring in Culpepper instead.
Culpepper lasted just four games as the starter for the Dolphins, while Brees went on to set NFL records during his Hall-of-Fame career with the Saints. Dolphins coach Nick Saban then left to return to the college game at the end of the 2006 season, and they went 1-15 the following year.
In nine seasons with the Steelers, Brown emerged as one of the very best receivers in football, making six Pro Bowls and earning four All-Pro First Team berths while leading the league in catches twice, yards twice and touchdowns once. He caught 100-plus balls for 1,200-plus yards and eight-plus scores in each of his final six seasons in Pittsburgh before the Steelers had enough of his off-field antics and traded him to the Raiders for third- and fifth-round picks.
Brown proceeded to get frostbite in a cryotherapy session, file a grievance about his helmet, sit out almost all of training camp, violate team rules and get fined multiple times by the team, confront and reportedly threaten then-Raiders general manager Mike Mayock and then demand his release shortly before the season opener. He never played for the Raiders and has since been plagued by various legal issues of increasing severity, including sexual assault allegations and a recent arrest on a charge of second-degree attempted murder.
12. Joey Galloway and Roy Williams to the Cowboys
The Cowboys are always searching for star wide receivers. Once Michael Irvin retired, they zeroed in on Galloway, who had been an early-career star with the Sehawks but struggled in his final season in Seattle after a prolonged contract holdout. Dallas sent two first-round picks to the Seahawks and got little in return as Galloway never regained his early-career form.
A few years later, the Cowboys tried again sending first-, third- and sixth-round picks to Detroit for Williams and a seventh-rounder. Williams had been a Pro-Bowler in 2006 but otherwise looked like a solid-at-best contributor, and the Cowboys gave up a No. 1-wideout price to land him. Again, he failed to live up to the billing. Rather than Williams, it was fourth-year undrafted free agent Miles Austin who became Tony Romo’s top target for the next few years.
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