(04-20-2021, 08:34 AM)Cleatwood Wrote: (04-20-2021, 08:27 AM)Mikey Wrote: what the fart? please cite any example in the history of all sports of a team being accused of tanking for the tenth or twentieth pick of a draft.
Exactly. If a team truly wanted to tank, they would be bringing guys off the street to take the field. There is a difference between incompetent roster building/management and intentional attempts to lose.
lol Thank you.
The board does this song and dance every single off season. No coaches or players purposefully try to lose games. That's not what tanking is. Tanking is putting out inferior players (or coaches) in order to give your team a better chance at losing. Those players on the field or court are trying to win the game but they're just not good enough. The Sixers did it for years and I think the Jags/Jets tried that this year.
And for me personally, I either want to have the 1st overall pick or make the playoffs. Continually being 7-9 or 6-10 does nothing for your franchise. "Yea but what about finishing strong!" Nah. There's no correlation between ending the season with a few wins and then continuing that streak the next season.
Agreed generally with the statement in bold.
But even with that, there's a distinction to be made.
If you have a young team...perhaps in the first or second year of a rebuild, and it finally has a strong enough nucleus to be competitive, it's finally comfortable in the schemes and it starts to put things together, and there is still a chance of making the playoffs (see 1996 & 2004 Jaguars), that's one thing. Let the team continue to develop naturally and win those games. If they fall short of the playoffs, okay, but you gave it a good shot and you have some indicia your team is on the right track.
But if your team has been clearly trending downward over the course of multiple seasons, there has been a purging of talent, the coach and/or FO has been on the hot seat and the team has zero chance to reach the playoffs, any late season wins are of no use whatsoever, especially if it contributes to a division foe getting a franchise QB. I expect players and coaches to be competitive. But competitive drive without competitive talent leads to, at best, a bunch of competitive losses. At the end of the season, you'd still want to purge the team of competitive but inferior talent (i.e. Taven Bryan) in favor of superior competitive talent.
In this instance, we have a new coach implementing new schemes. The team has bottomed out at 1-15. We'll have the new QB in addition to a slew of other new players to fit the scheme. If the team starts slowly then starts to win mid to late season, I'm okay with it. While a win might harm draft position, at least we go forth with the idea we have the franchise QB, and then it's a matter of putting in other pieces around him.
Worst to 1st. Curse Reversed!
