From the minute the Seahawks dealt Russell Wilson to Denver in March, comparisons were made to what stands as the trade against which almost all big trades in NFL history are measured — the Cowboys’ deal in 1989 sending running back Herschel Walker to the Vikings for a package that included four players and eight draft picks.
But initially, the comparisons were made mostly due to the size of the trades and their similarity in featuring one team trading an established superstar to another for a bounty of players and picks.
Not that comparisons are really all that clean and easy.
The Walker trade officially involved three teams and 18 players/picks with Dallas getting first- and second-rounders in 1990, 1991 and 1992.
The Wilson deal involved just two teams and 10 players/picks spread over two drafts, among the larger trades in league history, but with at least four others, including the Walker deal, involving more players/picks.
But as the season has progressed, the comparison increasingly made between the Wilson and Walker trades is whether the Seahawks might ultimately be perceived as winning it as decisively as the Cowboys, who used the picks to help build a team that won three Super Bowls in four years from 1992-95 while Walker spent 2 1/2 relatively fruitless years in Minnesota and was gone.
Seattle is already getting significant contributions from two players acquired in the Wilson deal (tight end Noah Fant and defensive lineman Shelby Harris) as well as two rookies (left tackle Charles Cross and edge rusher Boye Mafe) on its way to a surprising 6-4 record and the lead in the NFC West heading into the homestretch.
But the real change in perception could come in what Seattle might get next year when it also has Denver’s first- and second-round picks.
When the trade was made, the conventional wisdom was those would likely be picks lower in each round, if not near or at the bottom if everything worked out the way the Broncos hoped.
Instead, after Denver fell to 3-7 Sunday, those picks would be the fifth overall selection in the first round and 36th in the second.
And with a schedule that includes two games left against Kansas City and another at Baltimore, those picks could well stay right there (according to ESPN, the first-round pick now has a 90% chance of landing in the top 10 and 60% in the top five).
If the Seahawks make out as well on those picks as they did this year and things stay on their current trajectory in Denver, it might put over the top the increasingly popular take that Seattle is getting the better of this trade.
To back up real quick, Dallas traded Walker five games into the 1989 season to the Vikings, who had made it to at least the divisional round of the playoffs the preceding two years and felt Walker might be the missing piece to get them to the Super Bowl.
The Vikings at the time had one of the best defenses in the NFL highlighted by a secondary that was also among the best in the NFL headed by a young up-and-coming defensive backs coach named Pete Carroll.
The Cowboys had gone 3-13 the year before in the final season for legendary coach Tom Landry and were off to a winless start under first-year coach Jimmy Johnson (as well as first-year owner Jerry Jones), who decided Dallas would be better off getting a lot of picks to rebuild.
Dallas went 1-15 in 1989 but with the help of all those picks — one of which was used on Emmitt Smith, who became the leading rusher in NFL history — it quickly assembled a remade roster that won a Super Bowl within three years.
And the legacy of the trade is generally that it is either the best — or worst — in league history, depending on which side you’re on.
Could the Wilson deal really someday rival that?
That might take a lot, given the success Dallas had in the aftermath of the trade and because the Walker deal spun off into so many other deals.
As an ESPN story once detailed, the Cowboys used the 12 draft picks they got in the trade to make a bunch of other deals for additional picks.
When factoring in every trade made involving one of the picks Dallas got, the deals eventually involved 15 teams and 55 players. Large tentacles, indeed.
That included Dallas using some of those picks to make a trade to acquire the No. 1 choice in the 1991 draft (defensive tackle Russell Maryland).
One of the keys in getting a lot of picks is the flexibility it provides to make other moves — Seattle did that last year with one of the picks from the Wilson deal, turning the fifth-rounder it got at 145 into two other picks to take edge rusher Tyreke Smith and receiver Dareke Young.
And while Seattle officially selected Mafe with the second-rounder it got from Denver, the Seahawks then took running back Kenneth Walker III at 41.
Without that extra pick, Seattle would have had to have gone either/or there, and who knows what the Seahawks would have done in that scenario.
But boiled down to its most basic, Dallas got five players from the picks acquired from the Walker deal who were part of all three Super Bowl title teams — Smith, Maryland, safety Darren Woodson (a five-time Pro Bowler) and cornerbacks Kevin Smith and Clayton Holmes.
The Vikings also got a solid receiver in Jake Reed from one of the third-round picks it got back from Dallas along with Herschel Walker.
But from Minnesota’s view, the trade was Super Bowl-or-else.
And in that sense, the trade was an unqualified bust.
The Vikings lost a divisional playoff game in 1989 and then went 6-10 and 8-8 the next two years after which Walker was gone, not having come anywhere close to the 1,514 yards he’d had in 1988 — his best season with Minnesota was 825 yards and 10 TDs in 1991.
Interestingly, the Vikings quickly rebounded after an 8-8 season in 1992 in Walker’s final year to make the playoffs eight of the next nine seasons, showing that losing a big trade doesn’t have to consign a team to purgatory.
But the obvious added factor here is the money — the $296 million Denver owes Wilson through 2028 and huge dead salary cap hits through 2025.
The cap wasn’t a thing when the Walker trade was made, first instituted in 1994, adding another wrinkle that could be seen as favoring Seattle in this deal but also making apples-to-apples comparisons challenging.
For now, it’s safe to say that regardless of how accurate any comparisons might be, the Seahawks are enjoying the discussion.
