Before Chiefs traded for Trent Green, Drew Brees thought KC would pick him

Interesting stuff from Saints QB Drew Brees on the Dan Patrick Show today. They were talking about the draft and Patrick asked Brees where he thought he was going to be selected when he came out of Purdue in the 2001 NFL Draft.

Brees said the Chiefs were one of those teams who he thought would take him.

"I had heard a lot of things," Brees said on the DP Show. "I had heard at least two teams through the grapevine that told me if I was there in the late first round, they would take me. It was the Dolphins and I believe they chose 24 or 26, something like that. At one point, it was the Chiefs but they ended up trading for Trent Green right before that pick."

Indeed, the Chiefs traded for Trent Green on the Friday night before the start of the 2001 NFL Draft on Saturday (back when the draft wasn't in primetime). The Chiefs gave away the 12th overall pick to the St. Louis Rams for Green, which meant they had no first round pick to spend on Brees.

Green at the time was coming off an ACL injury. Then-Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil was quoted by SI as saying, ""It's a risk, but it's not reckless. If I didn't know Trent Green like I know him we probably would not have done it. But we know this kid and we know the doctors who worked on him and we feel sooner or later we are going to have a sound, healthy football player."

Mel Kiper's 2001 mock draft had Brees going to the Raiders at No. 28 while Sports Illustrated's mock had him going to the Steelers with the 16th pick. So it seems the Chiefs spending the 12th pick on him -- if they hadn't traded for Green -- was a realistic possibility.

How would things be different? I'm not sure it would be all that different because Green was one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL during his time in Kansas City. And it wouldn't be the first time that a team told a player that they would draft him and then reneged.

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— jason costigan (@Jasoncostigan) April 23, 2014