Baltimore gave up on Priest because Priest was coming off of a serious neck injury. Priest did put up some great seasons here in KC, and then his neck finally did him in.
As for SD trading Brees, keep in mind that Brees’s shoulder was destroyed. There was legit concern he may not play football again, depending on how surgery and recovery went. San Diego coming off a bad year, had a chance to draft a new franchise QB and New Orleans rolled the dice on Brees. New Orleans certainly got the better deal, but not by terribly much and not without some good luck on their side. Brees’s surgery couldve easily went sideways
In both cases they already used a 1st round pick on the replacement. Here’s how things went down, and this is just for anyone who is bored and interested in the back stories:
Priest had been with Baltimore for 3 seasons. One he rushed for just over 1,000 yards. Like you said, injuries derailed his 1999 campaign. The Ravens go ahead and use a 1st round pick on Jamal Lewis in 2000. Lewis leads the backfield (1,300 yards) to a Super Bowl, with Priest playing the backup role for 500 yards. Obviously you keep 22 year old rookie of the year Jamal Lewis and let 28 year old Priest move on. While Jamal was hurt the following year (torn ACL I believe), he had a great career including a 2,000 yard season. There’s no way Priest would have done what he did in KC if he stayed in Baltimore. That was the perfect storm of events that he fell into in KC.
After 3 seasons with the Chargers, Drew Brees did not look like “the guy” to lead the team. He was coming off a season where he went 2-9 and threw 11 TDs to 15 INTs. So they drafted Philip Rivers in 2004. Suddenly AFTER drafting Rivers you have Drew Brees looking like a legit starter and Drew was able to keep Rivers on the bench for 2 seasons. There was a legit QB controversy brewing in the background. Do you go ahead and give Drew a contract extension and keep your 1st round QB on the bench, or do you let a perfectly good QB in Brees walk and move to an unknown in Philip Rivers. Then by pure “luck” for everyone involved, Brees tears his shoulder up at the end of the 2005 season…making it easy for the Chargers to simply move on from Brees and go to Rivers. And like you said, that shoulder was a mess. The Saints made a ballsy move in signing Brees to such a large contract, but history favors the bold! And to really wrap up this arc of a story, Archie Manning was right all along. The Chargers were a dysfunctional organization and even winning didn’t cover it up.