The Rise of Tanking in the NFL

being on the outside looking in as a fan of an inept nfl franchise is a very lonely place to be it can cause you to re-evaluate why you even bothered to become a fan and before you know it you're looking at mock drafts in october to try and numb the pain in today's supercharged offensive league the already coveted franchise quarterback is placed on a higher pedestal than ever but as a gm just how do you get your hands on the right guy well if you're brave enough and have enough antacids to last 17 weeks you can embrace the tank purging talent from your roster or simply allowing your weak team to remain weak all in the name of acquiring better draft capital and of course getting that guy this risky tactic is simultaneously frowned upon encouraged and non-existent depending on who you ask but despite how popular it's become in recent years it's a very recent and massively imperfect science in the nfl so considering its limited track record it's worth asking does tanking actually provide a shortcut to the top and do its benefits even outweigh the price a team has to pay as a result of constantly losing well today that's what i want to talk about because nfl roster construction truly is an art and tanking for better or worse is one of its boldest mediums but before we get into things i'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's video over at fubotv for those of you who haven't heard of them before fubotv is a tv streaming service that grants you the ability to watch your favorite shows and live events without dealing with the insane price hikes and shady practices that cable companies have been employing for years with fubotv you're able to watch over a hundred of your favorite channels and coverage of live sporting events from all major networks and all at half the price that cable's gonna charge you i personally used to be one of those people who tried to watch sports from a janky live stream but thanks to fubo those days are long over not to mention i have access on every single one of my devices so if you're looking to cord cut all it takes to get started is clicking the link in the description to sign up for a free trial and test their service out and in addition you can get 15 off for your first month that's a completely risk-free trial and 15 off your first month at fubotv.com ste so a huge thank you again to fubotv and without further ado let's get back to the video [Music] so what the hell is tanking well in the broadest sense of the word it takes place when a front office intentionally fields a team too weak to really compete setting themselves up for failure in the short term in hopes that their patience allows for more success in the long term usually via building up young talent in the draft the strategy has been around for decades in other professional sports leagues but it's really picked up steam recently with successes such as the chicago cubs and houston astros in major league baseball and the most extreme example of tanking to date in sam hinke's trust the process 76ers an organization that sold off any desired piece of their team to the highest bidder and ultimately going 47 and 199 over three seasons all in the name of assembling a young core that would later make deeper postseason runs these are positive case studies in tanking but with that said there's glaring flaws that make tanking in the nfl both a lot harder to execute and a lot harder to ensure the success of for starters to players and coaches tanking does not exist as a concept with as violent and unpredictable of a sport as pro football is you will just not see players or coaches risking their own livelihood for the benefit of maybe moving up a spot or two on the draft board there have been some questionable moments here and there sure but if you ask any player this is a fact of the game that's not necessarily exclusive to football but where it really causes problems is that the nfl 16 game season is miniscule compared to the extensive 80 plus game campaigns of other pro leagues when you have 162 games like in baseball the good teams naturally separate themselves from the bad like panning through river for gold or in that case horrible baseball teams but with only 16 nfl games to establish your club as the definitive worst well that obviously muddies the waters a little if your team accidentally wins a game and remember they're always trying to that's 6.25 of your season etched into stone as a win and assuming you even get the first overall pick football is known as the ultimate team sport for a reason let's say you do land your quarterback of the future if you've been rocking turnstiles in place of offensive linemen you might just end up ruining your shot at competing for a super bowl not to mention when considering that scouts miss on possible franchise quarterbacks constantly all of a sudden tanking starts to look like the equivalent of betting your home on a complex series of coin flips so now that we've laid out all of that uncertainty why would any team want to tank well there's obviously a very blurry line between a team's roster being awful on purpose or awful just because they're awful and whether by accident or not fielding a non-competitor has been shown to have some pretty major advantages take for instance the infamous and often very misunderstood case of the 2011 indianapolis colts before the season news broke that colts hall of fame quarterback peyton manning was slated to miss the entire year due to off-season neck procedures this left a cycling of carrie collins curtis painter and dan orlowski as the team's dynamic trio of options under center and needless to say it wasn't pretty the team started the year 0 and 13 and were in the driver's seat to clinch the number one pick in the draft and presumably take stanford quarterback andrew luck the abysmal product they put on the field sparked controversy that the colts were intentionally throwing their season away to suck for luck but ultimately wins in two of their last three games would prompt a tiebreaker needed to even award them the top selection that final push still wouldn't be enough to save the jobs of nearly everyone in the front office though including team president and long-time general manager bill polian that distinction is why you can't reasonably say that the 2011 colts intentionally tanked their season sure they definitely could have brought in better talent than curtis painter at quarterback but ultimately everyone in the building was trying and failing to win without the player that carried them for over a decade but at the same time you can't say it didn't work out in their favor full tank or not embracing a roster that was utterly incapable without manning netted them yet another generational quarterback talent even if he would eventually be wasted by incompetent management in the years to come miss you andrew unlike the 2011 colts though who would get all the glory for a tank job they lucked into the cleveland browns of the mid-2010s would spend years sowing the seeds of a future that didn't look like it would ever materialize until very very recently to say that cleveland has played the long game in terms of building a competitive roster would be an insult to the concept of time but nonetheless thanks to a strategy never adopted before the browns still stand as at least partial evidence for and against the concept of tanking that it can work eventually but also that it can be a very messy process the man behind their plan was sashi brown who first joined cleveland in 2013 as an executive that took a far more analytical approach to roster construction brown was promoted to de facto general manager prior to the 2016 season and with partial intent cleveland would go 1-15 in his first year at the helm not to be outdone by a 2017 season that would go down as just one of two winless seasons in nfl history the on-field results were mind-meltingly bad and brown would be fired at the end of the season becoming a martyr of the analytics community in order to spare head coach hugh jackson who had managed a historic 1 and 31 start to his tenure but make no mistake while sashi brown had carved up a nauseating roster he left cleveland with all of the ingredients necessary to make a complete turn around after he was gone brown had flipped cleveland's roster inside out releasing pricey veterans left and right trading down from their high picks to acquire even more high picks in upcoming drafts and manipulating the salary cap to build a sky-high budget for the future savvy moves like the browns trade for brock osweiler and his bloated contract in exchange for a second round pick only further added ammunition to the pile sashi brown's downfall would ultimately be his lack of ability to capitalize on that war chest of draft picks but after his firing the team was staring down over a hundred and twelve million dollars in cap space while also boasting the most draft capital ever held by a team in the 2018 draft with 12 overall selections including four in the top 35 and two in the top four it was a haul inherited by new gm john dorsey that had the capacity to change the course of the franchise and though brown wouldn't be around to see it it would the 2018 offseason would see the additions of baker mayfield nick chubb jarvis landry denzel ward among others establishing a talented young core that already included miles garrett and after gaining their first regular season win in 635 days in route to a 7-8-1 finish even more talent would be added in the following off-season lackluster coaching stunted the browns in 2019 but 2020 saw the first major strides the team has made in decades winning a playoff game under first year head coach kevin stefanski to break the single longest playoff drought in the entire nfl thanks in part to the ruthless moves made by sashi brown over five seasons ago cleveland has found the path to contention in the afc even in pro football's least normal season to date even as of making this video cleveland remains in the top 10 teams in terms of available cap space so while it was by no means perfect the browns experiment in nba style tanking appears to finally be paying its dividends but understandably not every team wants to spend year after year going to work in a factory of sadness but in order to execute a tank without freak injury or persistent suffering an unparalleled level of shamelessness is required enter the 2019 miami dolphins who just needed a single off season to level their entire roster from the foundation on up to the top hitting the reset button on their franchise in a way that has never been pursued so aggressively with the hiring of expatriate brian flores in early 2019 the dolphins are ready to turn a page on the mediocrity that fans had become so well acclimated to with the team having finished between 6 and 10 and 8 and 8 in 9 of their previous 10 seasons so in an attempt to turn the tides in their favor general manager chris greer began by wiping the slate blank in the off season the team allowed the likes of cameron wake josh sitten and juwan james to all walk away unchallenged along with multiple other veterans and that was only a taste of what was to come the dolphins would begin to ship off any player even slightly resembling a cornerstone of their roster trading quarterback ryan tannehill for a seventh and fourth edge robert quinn for a sixth a tackle and receiver combo of laramie tunzel and kenny stills for two firsts and a second and all of these moves were made before the season had even kicked off grier didn't take his finger off the trigger once the year began though either shipping standout safety minka fitzpatrick for a first and change and later on they're starting running back kenyan drake for a fifth it all happened in the blink of an eye but for those of you keeping score at home that set the dolphins up with 12 picks in the 2020 draft including three first rounders it was a roster purge more blatant than anything seen before with nearly 65 million dollars in dead money accrued for the 2020 season and at least early on in the year the dolphins complete slash and burn tactics look like they would cause the nfl to totally re-evaluate the effects of tanking on league competition that early 2019 dolphins team was bad like disgrace to the history of football bad their first four games saw them outscored by a total of 163-26 with the entire team looking like they had absolutely no desire to compete for a franchise so clearly intent on throwing their season in the garbage can criticism would float in from all directions about how the dolphins had gone multiple steps too far after beginning the season 0-7 with many myself included believing that they were a legitimate contender to become the nfl's third team in the 016 club draft capital or not that is never good company to be in but for as obvious as the dolphins roster moves were in selling their present for the future head coach brian flores demonstrated not only why tanking is never a coordinated effort in pro football but the impact that he coached with genuine buy-in from his players can have regardless of the talent on the roster bill belichick's coaching tree is notorious for producing weak knock-offs of their mentor but flores instilled a culture in miami of respect for their process regardless of what noise outside the building suggested flores was never going to be on board with the idea of tanking and with that reflected on a daily basis his mindset carried through to the rest of the locker room eventually it stuck and in spite of the incredibly shoddy hand the dolphins were dealt in 2020 flores led the team to wins in five of their last nine games including a week 17 win in foxboro that denied the patriots a playoff buy for the first time in a decade 5 wins to 11 losses is certainly not a record the teams aspire to but that level of success relative to how hard expectations had been driven through the floor was cause for celebration in miami oh and not to mention but they still secured a top five draft pick and the quarterback their fan base had been clamoring for for over a year in spite of the bizarre circumstances 2020 would see further improvement with the dolphins making the jump to 10 and 6 and just barely missing the playoffs in a year marked by the growing pains of a young roster but regardless miami continues to be a shiny example of how to completely 180 the course of an nfl franchise almost overnight and i honestly would like to cover their entire ongoing transformation in a dedicated video it remains to be seen if the dolphins or brown's extreme tactics will serve as a blueprint for other teams looking to radically change their futures but there's also a massive warning for any team trying to follow in the footsteps of the nfl's tanking pioneers all the draft picks in the world cannot fix a broken organization and while elite talent can ascend the limitations of a team to an extent ultimately there's no greater importance for a young roster than a concrete belief in the culture of their team if the man running the locker room doesn't have a hundred percent buy-in from his guys that the work they put in day after day is building something larger than themselves there's no point to wasting your seasons just to waste future top draft picks a losing culture has the capacity to stick like glue in a locker room regardless of how talented a team may be on paper who knows whether tanking will become more common as the league moves forward but with success stories becoming more common in recent years i can't say i'd be surprised to see a couple of copycats because for as controversial and risky as it is in the nfl there is one thing that it correctly executed tank job can inspire in both fans and at every level of a desperate organization hope [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Set the Edge

Views: 358,905

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Id: CZVna00KH4g

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021