Debate: What’s the worst trade in Denver sports history?

The Colorado Rockies and Denver Broncos have each made massive sport-changing trades involving MVP candidates in the past several years.

The Rockies shipped their star third baseman to St. Louis at the behest of an organizational dispute while the Broncos added Russell Wilson to be the final puzzle piece to end a playoff drought. Unquestionably, neither of these deals worked out well for the Mile High City teams and each will go down in their respective sports among the worst trades of all time.

The question Denver Sports’ Broncos Senior Reporter Andrew Mason, and Denver Sports Analyst Jake Shapiro are asking: which mega trade was the worst in Denver sports history?

The blockbusters:

Broncos get:

• QB Russell Wilson
• 2022 fourth-round pick (DL Eyioma Uwazurike, Iowa State)

Seahawks get:

• • QB Drew Lock
  • DT Shelby Harris
  • TE Noah Fant
  • 2022 first-round pick (OT Charles Cross, Mississippi State)
  • 2022 second-round pick (OLB Boye Mafe, Minnesota)
  • 2022 fifth-round pick (OLB Tyreke Smith, Ohio State)
  • 2023 first-round pick (CB Devon Witherspoon, Illinois)
  • 2023 second-round pick (EDGE Derick Hall, Auburn)

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Rockies get:

• LHP Austin Gomber
• INF Mateo Gil
• INF Elehuris Montero
• RHP Tony Locey
• RHP Jake Sommers

Cardinals get:

• 3B Nolan Arenado
• approximately $51 million

Why were the trades made?

Mase: The Broncos were at a point of desperation regarding the quarterback position. Quarterback is the alpha and omega in football in a way that no position in baseball — or any other sport — can match. And after missing the playoffs four six-straight years cycling through a series of quarterbacks who never rose above middling status, general manager George Paton felt as though he needed to make a bold move to rearrange the deck.

When Plan A — as in Aaron, surname Rodgers — dissolved when the reigning two-time MVP renewed his vows with the Green Bay Packers, the Broncos brought their Plan B to fruition. That was the result of simmering talks and conversations that included at least one evening at a downtown Indianapolis bar hammering out the terms of the deal.

And with that, the Broncos appeared to have solved their quarterback quandary.

Shap: While there’s an obvious answer to why the Broncos traded for Wilson, the Rockies reasoning for dealing Arenado still isn’t entirely clear. What we do know is there was an organizational rift between team star Arenado and club general manager Jeff Bridich. Owner Dick Monfort sided with his enigmatic Bridich over the future Hall of Famer which was made all the more odd a few months after the deal when Bridich himself unceremoniously left his post. Still, why would Monfort side with a replaceable management member over his irreplaceable franchise cornerstone? Was it as simple as the organization’s leadership chart? Was it because Arenado had a history of overstepping his power including wanting to voice in on roster control and he finally went a step too far? These are all hypothetical as are the next questions.

Maybe the real reason Arenado was traded had nothing to do with the dispute. Could it have been to spark a rebuild Monfort would not admit was underway? What if the deal was conducted under some type of fiscal distress as the Rockies recovered from COVID-19? Monfort was the lone owner in baseball to vote against restarting play in 2020 and at the same time, his company was undertaking a giant construction project across the street. All the while the Rockies were not getting their massive source of income from attendance and industries based on supply chain and meat packing in the Monfort’s town of Greeley were taken a beating. The point is nobody really knows why Arenado was traded, it could be a combination of all of these factors or none that we know.

One thing is for sure, the opt-out in the eight-year $260 million deal Arenado signed to remain a Rockie for life it seemed was an unforced error. Bridich was the one who put that in the contract and thus gave Arenado the leverage to put pressure on the Rockies.

How did the trade impact the team?

Mase: The deal shook the Broncos to their core. It also altered expectations for the coming season. Before the trade, recently-hired coach Nathaniel Hackett appeared to be taking on a rebuilding job, perhaps with Lock competing with a veteran addition in free agency if Rodgers couldn’t be procured. All of a sudden, Hackett found himself guiding a team with playoff expectations. Any notion of a slow rebuilding timeframe found itself in the repository.

He was not up for the task.

All hopes for redeeming the trade in 2023 revolved around Hackett’s calamitous coaching being the entire reason why Wilson and the offense failed to find its form. Meanwhile, the Broncos had other problems. By extending Wilson’s contract — without which a trade likely never would have happened — Denver began moving out of the cost-controlled quarterback sphere in which it had operated for all but two seasons of the post-Peyton Manning era. Meanwhile, the Broncos faced down having more of their cap used on quarterback while still navigating the draft-capital deficit that resulted from the trade for Wilson.

Teams can typically contend and succeed with either an expensive quarterback and a passel of contributing first-contract players, or a cost-controlled, first-contract quarterback and highly-paid players at other spots. The Broncos found themselves trying to win without draft capital and with a quarterback on a massive, nine-figure contract. In a salary-capped league, that’s nearly impossible.

Shap: Almost instantly the Rockies went from bad to worse. Any hopes of maintaining playoff hopes centered around Arenado that persisted throughout the late teens were dashed immediately. The smooth streak of transitions of team stars over club history ended a year later when Trevor Story left in free agency. Off the field, many fans of the Rockies finally swore off their patronage and the $50 million in addition to sending away the team’s best player was just a punch in the gut.

Arenado went on to have a solid 2021, earning an All-Star Game nod—the exhibition was played in Colorado—and another Gold Glove. In 2022, Arenado finished third in MVP voting and quite possibly had the best season of his career. He led the Cardinals to two straight postseason trips, but both times they went home without winning a game.

While Arenado chased MVPs, Colorado campaigned for their first-ever 100-loss season. A mark the club staved off in 2022 but fell to with 103 defeats in 2023. On those teams are the only two pieces from the Arenado trade to make the big leagues thus far, the already MLB pitcher at the time of the deal Austin Gomber and one-time top prospect Elehuris Montero. Together the tandem has been worth 2.0 WAR in three seasons over 83 games pitched for Gomber and 492 plate appearances for Montero. The left-handed starter has been one of the worst pitchers in baseball to get that many innings over the last several years while the Rockies can’t seem to find a position for Montero, with several other young players getting playing time in his normal spots. But both those outcomes are better than two of the other assets in the trade, which are each now out of Colorado’s system without ever making it to the Rockies.

What’s the legacy of each trade?

Mase: The 2022 season was such a thorough disaster that Hackett didn’t even make it out of the season. With new ownership seeking a firmer voice and vision from its head coach, the Broncos interviewed candidates such as Jim Harbaugh and DeMeco Ryans before settling on Sean Payton — and surrendering a package that included the first-round pick acquired months earlier in the Bradley Chubb trade for the privilege.

Payton imprinted his stamp on the organization, but he and Wilson went together like lamb and tuna fish. The team began to win after Payton scaled back the offensive tactics after a 1-4 start that would eventually reach 1-5 before a turnaround. But all the while, trouble brewed, with the team asking Wilson to delay the injury guarantee on his contract just 48 hours after its first win over Kansas City in eight years. The moment that request arrived, the clock began ticking loudly on what would be an inevitable breakup.

And now the Broncos will absorb an $85 million cap charge over two years for Wilson to NOT play for them. It’s bad. But the team decided that keeping him on the roster for another year and adding $37 million to that outlay — for which the Broncos would have been on the hook if he was still on the roster March 18 — was a worse option.

There is another layer to the legacy though, and it is this: No future compilation of the NFL’s worst trades will not include the Broncos’ swap for Wilson. That doesn’t mean it is THE worst swap in the sport’s history. It probably isn’t even the worst trade made in the 2022 calendar year, thanks to the Cleveland Browns’ trade for Deshaun Watson. But it enters a special class of damaging deals highlighted by the Minnesota Vikings’ 1989 trade for Herschel Walker — a deal that made possible the Dallas Cowboys’ 1990s run to three Super Bowls in four seasons.

But is it the bottom five of all-time NFL trades? It’s hard to argue otherwise. The Arenado deal doesn’t rise to that standard within MLB.

Shap: It’s hard to argue that the Arenado trade is among baseball’s worst of all time when in that list has to be Babe Ruth going from one rival to the other and sparking a century-long curse. Oh, and the Nolan trade might not even be the worst trade involving a Nolan as future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan was once sent packing for pretty much nothing. But the question is what is the worst in Denver history? Which trade will resonate with fans for longer? Which trade will not only hurt the team but the way it’s viewed by everyone?

For that, it seems the clear answer is the Rockies sending their most talented player ever along with $50 million down I-70 in exchange for irrelevance.

Wilson’s lasting legacy won’t be as a Denver athlete, he’s a Seattle sports star whose biggest moment came in beating the Broncos for a Super Bowl. Arenado is an all-time Denver sports star, and one who should’ve retired as the greatest Rockies player ever. He’s spent nearly a decade being inarguably the best player at his position and his defense made him the ca n’t-miss show in town and for a while across baseball. Only Wilson’s win against Kansas City will be a highlight of his time in Denver, for Arenado there were many great moments, meaning we were robbed of so many more by a trade that still doesn’t make much sense.

The Rockies haven’t mattered since the Arenado trade, and it’s hard to say when they will mean anything to much of anyone again. The fanbase seems to have quiet quit the team since Arenado left, and there’s little evidence management has done anything but the same. The Broncos will bounce back, keep selling out games, and likely remain the most important thing in Denver. The bad Wilson trade worsened the playoff drought, but the Arenado trade made everyone in Colorado question the reason for the Rockies existence.

Unlike Wilson, Arenado will still likely make the Hall of Fame one day, and this trade likely took the Rockies cap off his Cooperstown plaque.