Quote:I understand if a team wants to see younger players, or marginal players, for the purpose of evaluation, and are willing to take losses to do so.   But that's not what we're talking about here.  What we are talking about is losing on purpose with the goal of securing a high draft pick.  

 

See but that's the thing, you can't tease out the difference between those two.  We all know the first sentence happens, but you'd have to be psychic to really know the intentions of the GM doing it.  Are they playing young guys for evaluation, with a side effect being they lose and improve draft position?  Are they playing young guys to lose for improved draft position, with the side effect of evaluation?  Does it even matter? 

 

We're not mind readers, but the bottom line is there are multiple advantages for doing it, and it comes out the same in the wash: you're weakening your team in the short term, for potential longer term gains.  You're tanking the current season intentionally if you're not putting the guys on the field who give you the best chance to win the game this week, regardless of your intentions, which we all can only speculate on.  I don't see how the intention behind it changes the fact that they're choosing to put a weaker team on the field, thus increasing the chances of losing.

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