NFL Draft: Would a draft lottery make sense for the NFL?
With the NBA Draft Lottery taking place on Tuesday night, it’s worthwhile to at least entertain the idea of an NFL Draft lottery.
On Tuesday night, the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery will decide the order of the first 14 picks in the forthcoming draft. The three teams with the worst record in the league (New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Phoenix Suns) all have a 14 percent chance of getting the No. 1 pick, unlike in the NFL Draft where the worst team in the league automatically is awarded the first-overall selection.
At the same time, though, the most interesting aspect of the NBA Draft Lottery is the notion that any team that misses the playoffs has at least some chance of getting the first pick and every team has a chance to rise or fall based on how the lottery plays out. The cause behind this is, of course, to try to give less incentive to tank. That brings up an interesting proposition for the NFL Draft.
First and foremost, we need to say that tanking in the NBA is much easier to achieve than in the NFL. It’s a less physical game played with a substantially smaller roster and, though nuanced, substantially fewer aspects that can affect the outcome of a given contest. There is far more of a stigma in the NFL about the notion of tanking than in the NBA.
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Having said that, the notion of an NFL Draft Lottery becomes interesting looking at the 2020 and 2021 NFL Drafts. With Tua Tagovailoa, Jake Fromm, Justin Herbert and a loaded quarterback class next year then followed by Trevor Lawrence in 2021, teams have good reason to try and bottom out and have the best opportunity to grab a franchise-changing quarterback — an actual one and not Daniel Jones.
No NFL team is going to admit to tanking — doing so would be blasphemous in the league. Having said that, there are undoubtedly teams that will position themselves to try and get their quarterback of the future that can ultimately lead them to the promised land, even if it isn’t outright trying to lose games.
When you have teams that are positioning themselves in that manner, the overall product of the NFL suffers. Though the Cleveland Browns are eyeing a breakout 2019 season, they went through one NFL Draft after another picking first or close to it. Yes, it helped them get to where they are now, but it was also painful to watch on the field. Thus, if the NFL wanted to protect the product, they could indeed try to prevent that sort of team-building by instituting a lottery.
In theory, an NFL Draft lottery would make sense in that regard. Realistically, however, it’s not something that makes a whole lot of sense. Even with a sure-fire stud at quarterback, the most important position on the field, 52 other roster spots make up an NFL team and, ultimately, matter. Tanking is much more beneficial to an NBA franchise that could, without a lottery, just lose and then land a superstar that immediately transforms them.
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Put as simply as possible, an NFL Draft lottery hasn’t and won’t happen because tanking is less beneficial than it is in the NBA. Yes, a team improves their chances at a game-changing pick, but the game changes far less than it would in the NBA when an NFL team makes that pick. It’s a simple numbers game in that regard.
It’s certainly fun to postulate about the notion of an NFL Draft lottery and fanbases losing their minds if they did or didn’t get the No. 1 pick. In terms of actually ever seeing it, though, there’s almost no chance that would happen.