This NFL rule change would prevent tanking
The Arizona Cardinals could easily be in the playoffs, right now.
And if we all listen to my man Yank, at least one of the circumstances that upended their season won’t happen again.
Let’s start by assigning blame for the Cardinals’ failure to reach the postseason.
We could blame coach Kliff Kingsbury for failing to put up more than 21 points in four of the final seven games.
We could blame Rams defensive end Morgan Fox for injuring Kyler Murray by falling on the quarterback’s leg.
Or … or … and hear me out on this, we could blame Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence, a pair of college quarterbacks any downtrodden franchise would be thrilled to have.
Jacksonville with have its pick of that dynamic duo by virtue of finishing 1-15 and securing the No. 1 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft.
And nobody here is going to accuse the Jacksonville Jaguars of intentionally losing games (you know, tanking), but they did start Mike Glennon at quarterback.
Glennon has a career 6-21 record as an NFL starter, including going 0-5 last season for the Jaguars. He had a 37 quarterback rating in 2020, which if he had thrown enough passes to qualify, would have put him at about 34th among NFL signal callers, right behind Sam Darnold and two spots ahead of Dwayne Haskins.
Glennon played against the Bears, guiding the Jaguars to a 41-17 loss.
And since the Bears finished just ahead of the Cardinals in the playoff standings, you can see how we can blame Fields and Lawrence.
Yank is a genius AND a sports fan
OK, and now that we’ve had a little fun with it, let’s actually propose a solution, which is why we’re tapping my man Jacob “Yank” Poleyeff, who last year came up with a solution for how to fix the College Football Playoff. (You’ll notice that small-conference schools have no shot at reaching the title tournament. To fix this, Yank says the selection committee should vote for how many teams make the field as well as which teams reach the field. He even showed how this could be done fairly with an odd number of teams.)
Yank is an actuary, by trade, or he was “for about 40 years until he retired,” he said. “At that point, my profession became bothering Greg Moore with all kinds of crazy sports ideas.”
Again, no one is saying that NFL players are throwing games. There’s too much on the line for that. But right now, the system incentivizes losing.
“’Suck for Luck,’ remember that?” Poleyeff said, recalling the race to the bottom featuring the 2011 Indianapolis Colts, St. Louis Rams and Minnesota Vikings.
“The thing is, it’s not as if we’re accusing the players and coaches of playing less than their best … but it’s just not a good look,” he said.
He’s right. Fan bases shouldn’t be rooting for teams to lose games, regardless of what could be at stake.
Teams have to WIN for top pick
So, here’s the solution:
Once a team is eliminated from contention, everything flips. And the number of wins a team has after being eliminated should determine draft order.
It would still weigh toward parity, since the teams that are eliminated first would have the most chances to pick up post-elimination wins, but mathematically speaking, it lakes a long time for a team’s season to end.
The Jets, for example, were eliminated in Week 11. They were winless, at the time.
The post-elimination wins would be known as “draft wins” and would be shown in a separate column in the standings.
This season, the Jets would have started trying to pick up draft wins in Week 12. The Jaguars would have started trying to win for the top pick a week later. And the Bengals and Chargers would have started trying to pick up draft wins in Week 13.
“The bottom line is: You never want a team to be interested in losing, look like they want to lose … always have the incentive to win,” Poleyeff said.
“Win. Win. Win,” he said later. “Don’t stop that incentive just because a team has been eliminated. But also you want to make some of these (otherwise meaningless) games interesting.”
He’s got a bunch of tie breakers, like overall record, point differential, whatever.
But the radical part of the plan is to disincentive losing.
“Eliminated teams will have more incentive to try to win these games, and win these games they will try to do,” he said.
Here’s hoping someone in the NFL’s Competition Committee gives this a read and takes interest.
Who knows? If Yank’s Anti-Tank plan were in effect for the 2020 season, the Cardinals might be in the playoffs.