Worst Trades of My Lifetime

Still upset over the Adam Dunn deal, I figured I’d put together a list of the worst trades my teams have made in my sports watching life. In no particular order:
Fredd Young to the Colts for two first round picks. Seriously? TWO first round picks? This trade has to be the single worst deal of any of my teams in my lifetime. Though now we think of him as perhaps the finest owner in the NFL, we forget what a disastrous tenure Jim Irsay had as GM. He traded away draft picks like candy. It was perhaps this trade as much as any other that would later convince him that he didn’t know crap about football and had better hire a great football man to run things. And what was with two ‘d’s in Young’s name? This could not have turned out any worse.
Marshal Faulk to the Rams for a second round pick. I know that we got Edge. I know that it was the best deal we could get. But seriously. We dealt one of the most dynamic players in history for a second round pick. It wasn’t exactly a ‘mistake’, but it was a bad deal. I wonder if Polian could do it over again, knowing how dominant Faulk would be for the next several years, if he wouldn’t have kept him, paid him, and drafted someone else with that first round pick.
Craig Erickson to the Colts for a first round pick. Yikes.
Mark Jackson to the Nuggets for Jalen Rose. This trade was so bad that Donnie Walsh immediately undid it by fleecing the Nuggets and got both Rose AND Jackson.
Antonio Davis to the Raptors for the 5th pick (Johnathan Bender). Maybe this deal works if Bender wasn’t made of glass. Unfortunately, he was and Davis went to the All-Star Game the next year.
The trade most like this Dunn deal? Paul O’Neil to the Yanks for Roberto Kelley. People were all over O’Neil for all the things he couldn’t do (ironically, hit 30 HRs), and ignored all the things he was good at (great arm, incredible stroke). Kelley was crap, and O’Neil was a cornerstone of the Yankees dynasty of the late 90s, becoming one of the most popular players in recent Yankee history.
Links:
CHFF has the Colts at #3 in their new Power Poll. It’s hard to quibble with the logic of #1 and 2. The Cold Hard Football Fact for the Colts is something we talked a lot about last year, and has to improve (the Clark part, not the Wayne part).
FOLLOW UP POINT: In thinking about the 1999 Colts, imagine if they had kept Faulk and paired him up under the following scenarios:
Faulk and Edge
Faulk and Torry Holt (Terrance Wilkins was the #2 WR on that team. Yikes)
Faulk and Champ Bailey on D after trading the 5th pick for the New Orleans draft
Faulk and Booger
Faulk and Chris McCalister
I love Edge, but tell me that every single one of those combos wouldn’t have been better than James/Peterson.