In the NFL, there’s a very real incentive to tank. The NFL would prefer that it doesn’t happen or, at a minimum, that no one talks about it.
For several teams, there’s a tanking dance in Week 18 for the first overall pick in the draft.
Currently, the 3-13 Patriots hold the top pick. They’ll clinch it with a loss on Sunday. That creates an incentive for New England to not try to win the game.
It creates a different incentive for the division rival against whom they finish the season. If the Bills don’t want the Patriots to emerge with the top pick in each round of the 2025 draft — including the all-important No. 1 pick — the Bills could try to lose. Or at least not try very hard to win.
Meanwhile, the 3-13 Titans, 3-13 Browns, and 3-13 Giants each could end up with the top pick, depending on how the other games go.
There’s plenty of chatter in league circles regarding attempts to snag the first overall pick. Or, in the case of the Bills, from preventing the Pats from getting it by letting the Pats win.
It’s an awkward reality of a draft process that gives the worst teams from the prior season dibs on the best players in the draft. And there’s real value in a team positioning itself higher in the draft order.
It costs nothing to lose a game. It costs plenty to move up in the draft.
Really, what’s the difference between 3-14 and 4-13? Nobody cares. Few will even remember. A lost season is a lost season, regardless of the number of losses.
Players don’t tank; they don’t care at all about draft order. But coaches, executives, and owners can have plenty of influence over what happens in a given game.
In the last game of the 2014 season, for example, the Buccaneers entered the second half of a game against the Saints with a 20-7 lead. But Tampa needed a loss to secure the first overall pick. So, when the third quarter started, most of the starters were removed from the game.
“When someone gets hurt, the coaches upstairs will say, ‘Coach, the corner’s out, the right corner’s coming in,’” former Saints coach Sean Payton said during an appearance on PFT Live in 2022. “And I just kept hearing over the headset, ‘They took out Lavonte David, they took out -- Coach, all their backups are in.’ And all that took place in the second half of a game, and you know what? We gladly won it then.”
And they did. Tampa’s 20-7 halftime lead became a 23-20 win for the Saints.
The league rarely if ever does anything about tanking. When former Dolphins coach Brian Flores claimed that Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered $100,000 for each loss during an effort to tank for quarterback Joe Burrow, Ross claimed he was joking. And the league bought it. Even if the punchline to Ross’s knee-slapper was never obvious.
As the final Sunday of the 2024 season looms, there’s enough chatter to suggest that some teams are not prioritizing winning their games — whether it’s to get the top pick or, in the case of Bills-Patriots, to perhaps keep New England from having the top pick for the first time since 1993. Even if there will be scant proof of tanking, the league should warn all teams that any evidence of anything other than an all-out effort to win the game will be investigated and potentially punished.
It’s still a sticky situation for the NFL. At a time when the league has fully embraced all things betting, any suggestion that teams aren’t really trying to win could be problematic, even if it’s happening. The safest approach for 345 Park Avenue could be to take a see/hear/speak no evil approach and get through the last slate of games, regardless of whether one or more teams will succumb to the temptation to tank.
