New Orleans acquired safety Johnny Fuller from San Francisco…
New Orleans acquired safety Johnny Fuller from San Francisco on July 9, 1973 for a future third-round draft choice. The strongest completed draft chain points to the Saints' 1976 third-round pick, No. 63 overall, which passed through San Francisco to Kansas City and became linebacker Keith Simons. Fuller immediately became a Saints starter and logged 36 games with 34 starts from 1973 through 1975.
New Orleans Saints Received
- player Johnny Fuller
San Francisco 49ers Received
- pick 1976 third round pick (#63- Keith Simons , later traded to Kansas City)
Trade Analysis
The July 9, 1973 transaction itself is straightforward. Contemporary reporting says New Orleans acquired defensive back Johnny Fuller from San Francisco for an undisclosed draft choice. The harder question is identifying that choice. Pro Sports Transactions has carried two possibilities, but the completed draft trail favors the Saints' 1976 third-round pick, No. 63 overall. A later 49ers draft ledger explicitly lists a 1976 third-round choice coming from New Orleans and then going to Kansas City, while the Saints' historical material says their third-round pick was traded to San Francisco. Pro Sports Transactions then traces No. 63 from New Orleans through San Francisco to Kansas City in the 1975 Nate Allen deal.
One older 49ers media guide describes Fuller's compensation as a 1975 third-round choice, but the club's actual 1975 draft ledger does not show a third-round selection from New Orleans. San Francisco's 1975 third-round choices are identified as coming from Buffalo, Washington and St. Louis, while the team's own pick had gone to the Giants. By contrast, the 1976 49ers draft ledger explicitly says its third-round choice from New Orleans went to Kansas City. That completed chain resolves the year discrepancy more convincingly than the isolated 1975 notation and rules out the 1974 fourth-round No. 83 Clint Haslerig theory, which is separately tied to New Orleans' earlier Jets transaction and another Saints-49ers deal.
Fuller gave New Orleans substantial direct value. NFL records show him starting 12 of 13 games for the Saints in 1973, all 12 games in 1974 and 10 of 11 games in 1975. Across those three seasons he appeared in 36 games with 34 starts, becoming a regular member of the New Orleans secondary after five seasons in San Francisco. That is exactly the kind of sustained starter production a team hopes to obtain when spending a future third-round pick.
San Francisco still received a useful asset. The 1976 third-round choice became No. 63 overall, but the 49ers did not select Keith Simons themselves. Before the 1976 draft, they traded the New Orleans-derived third-rounder to Kansas City in the September 1975 deal for defensive back Nate Allen, with Randy Beisler also going to the Chiefs. TradeVerdicts therefore credits San Francisco for acquiring a third-round asset that remained liquid enough to be used in another personnel move, not for Simons' eventual Kansas City career.
In hindsight, New Orleans gets the stronger grade because Fuller delivered three seasons as a near-every-down starter. San Francisco obtained legitimate future draft value and later reused it, so the return was not wasted, but the Saints' 34 starts are the clearest realized production from the original exchange. A B+ for New Orleans and B- for San Francisco reflects that advantage while still recognizing the quality of a third-round return.