Washington acquired veteran safety Mike Gaechter from Dallas…

The legacy TradeVerdicts source rows attached Mike Gaechter to two different New York Giants transactions in July 1971, but the surviving historical record points to one actual trade between Dallas and Washington. Contemporary newspaper coverage dated July 21 reports that Dallas dealt safety Mike Gaechter to Washington for draft compensation. Biographical and transaction summaries consistently date the move to July 20, 1971 and describe the return as a conditional draft choice that ultimately was not exercised. No reliable source found in the R210 review places the Giants in the transaction. Gaechter's career context helps explain why the condition did not produce lasting value. He had been a major Dallas defensive contributor through the 1960s, finishing his Cowboys career with 21 interceptions, but ruptured his Achilles tendon after the 1969 season and spent all of 1970 on injured reserve. Dallas' 1971 media guide still listed him entering camp, but the Cowboys moved him to Washington shortly after. Washington was willing to take a look at the veteran under new coach George Allen, yet the evaluation period was brief. Historical accounts report that the Redskins released Gaechter on August 11, only a few weeks after the trade. Pro Football Reference records no Washington regular-season appearances and no NFL games after his Dallas career, so Washington received no regular-season on-field production from the acquisition. Dallas likewise did not realize a downstream draft player because the conditional choice was not exercised. That makes the hindsight outcome effectively zero on both sides. An Even Trade verdict with D grades for Dallas and Washington better represents the realized value than the generic C grades attached to the two imported Giants artifacts. The transaction itself is supported at high confidence by contemporary reporting and player-career records. The precise conditional mechanism is less fully documented in the surviving newspaper wording, which described undisclosed draft choices, but multiple later historical sources agree that the usable compensation was a conditional choice that did not convey. R210 therefore normalizes NYG-1971-0149 into the actual Dallas-Washington transaction. The companion NYG-1971-0150 row should be treated separately as a duplicate-source artifact and suppressed after this canonical correction is established.