When Losing Means Winning a Better Draft Pick

Photo by Marianne O’Leary, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

I had medium high hopes for my New England Patriots at the start of the season. By the time they lost to the Dolphins in late October and fell to 2-6, however, I, and most of my fellow fans, had decided the season was over and that it would be better if they keep losing and get as high a draft position as possible, especially since the upcoming draft has been rated as having multiple potential franchise quarterbacks. The Patriots would go on to lose their next four games, and they were so bad that their game against the Chiefs, which was scheduled to be a Monday night game on national television, became the first Monday night game in league history to be “flexed” out of its spot and replaced with another, despite the star power of Patrick Mahomes (and Taylor Swift).

At 2-10, the Patriots were in prime position for a top pick and would do no worse than #2 if they don’t win more than one game the rest of the way. But then they beat the Steelers and Broncos, two teams with playoff hopes, in the following three weeks and then almost beat the Bills last week. Whatever their fans were rooting for, the team is still trying as hard as they can to win all their games.

Patriots fans are not alone in this. Many fans in Arizona, New York, Washington, and elsewhere have also been rooting against their teams for months, and bemoan every win that knocks their teams a few steps down in the draft order. Those teams, like the Patriots, have also still been trying to win all their games. The Giants and Commanders made quarterback changes within the last month to try to win more games this year. Giants fans have been joking for months about how Tyrod Taylor would lead the Giants to a meaningless win against the Eagles in the last week of the season to keep them away from drafting a top quarterback, and now it has a good possibility of actually happening.

In sports, it’s called “tanking” when a team doesn’t try its best to win their games because they’d rather have a higher draft pick at the end of the year. This is something fans of losing teams often root for, and the incentives for the team are there, especially in football and basketball where there is a (relatively) good track record of top picks becoming stars.

So why do teams tank way less often than fans want, even when everyone on a team would agree that the best thing for the team long term is for them to lose? One answer is that even though it would benefit the team, it wouldn’t benefit the players or the coaches. Players are not going to play poorly or lose on purpose, when many are fighting just to stay in the league, and every point or yard means more money in the next contract. Player careers are short and player turnover is high each season. A team drafting a better player often just means that player is taking your job. Why would Tyrod Taylor want the Giants to draft a franchise quarterback, when he’s likely not even on the team next year, and he’s trying to show he’s good enough for the Giants or another team to take a chance on him as their starter? The same applies to coaches. If your team is that bad, chances are the coach is getting fired unless it’s a new coach in his first year. The benefits of tanking do not go to the players and coaches who won’t be there next year.

But of course tanking does happen in sports. This happens most often in the last game of the season, when it’s clear how a single win or loss affects a team’s draft position, with a team benching their best players. In 2014 the Buccaneers sat down their starters in the second half to surrender a three touchdown lead and secure the #1 pick for Jameis Winston. In the NBA just this year, the Mavericks, despite still being in contention for a playoff spot, sat their starters in the last two games because they’d traded their first round pick on the condition that it was lower than #10. By losing their last two games, the team was fined $750,000 by the league, but retained their pick.

In the NFL, teams sometimes tank for more than just one game. The most famous recent case was the 2011 Colts “suck for Luck” season. Peyton Manning was injured at the start of the season and the team quickly fell out of contention. The team went with Curtis Painter then Dan Orlovsky as their quarterbacks despite better players being available, and Manning healthy enough to play by the end of the year. This secured them the worst record in the league which allowed them to take Andrew Luck in the following year’s draft.

In the NBA, tanking is a much bigger problem, and the league has been fighting a decades long battle with teams to limit it. In 1984 it got so bad that the league instituted a lottery system so that every team that missed the playoffs has a chance at the top 3 picks. Even with this change, teams continue to tank mostly in years with a highly ranked prospect, and the NBA have had to continually adjust the draft lottery system to discourage tanking.

This Sunday, the Patriots host the Jets in the final game of the regular season. Depending on the results of the final week, the Patriots could draft anywhere from #2 to #7. The Patriots have beaten the Jets 15 games in a row, and fans around here are conflicted over whether breaking that streak is worth having a higher draft pick. To which I say: J-E-T-S-JETS-JETS-JETS!