Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

As a Jets fan, I have endured all sorts of tanking talk from the media and fans pretty much the entire calendar year. I think this tanking stuff came from NBA circles where one single player can dramatically turn around a franchise. New York media and Jets fans have decided once and for all that the Jets must be putrid in 2017 so that they can draft a quarterback in the first round next year and 5-11 is not going to be good enough, that the team needs to be 3-13 or worse. Otherwise, the Jets will have to trade up like the Eagles and Rams did in 2016 and that, like, will be bad and stuff.

In my opinion, the Jets are just rebuilding. I don't see any evidence where the franchise decided "We want to lose on purpose." I engaged in intense, heated battles with Jets fans who think everything the Jets have been doing this season is wrong and that the three wins they have is a very, very bad thing. These fans want Todd Bowles to purposefully lose. They feel Josh McCown is too good and should be benched. They think anyone over the age of 27 shouldn't be on the team.

There are some people out there who think the Colts tanked to get Andrew Luck and the Titans tanked to get Marcus Mariota and the Buccaneers tanked to get Jameis Winston.

Does anyone here think any teams in NFL history truly tanked to acquire certain players?

The post that was originally here was possibly confusing so I removed it. I will repost depending upon how the thread goes.

Speaking of tanking, I have always been suspicious of a 1958 game between the Detroit Lions and the New York Giants. The Detroit Lions, eliminated from title contention, played the Giants in Detroit on the 2nd from last game in the 1958 regular season. The Giants needed to win the game to stay in the race for the Eastern Conference Championship. If they lost, then the Cleveland Browns would win the title in the east and go to the NFL Championship game against the Baltimore Colts.

The Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns were bitter rivals with both teams winning 3 NFL Championships during the 1950's. The Browns won more games and played in more championship games than the Lions during that decade, but Detroit almost always beat Cleveland in head to head games. Naturally, both teams considered themselves to be better than the other. The Detroit Lions greatly resented any success that the Cleveland Browns had, but to beat the Giants in that game in Detroit would put the Browns into the championship game. Not a great incentive for Detroit to win that game.

Detroit was beating the Giants, 17 to 12 in the 4th quarter. In punt formation with a 4th down and about 19 yards to go, punter Yale Lary, instead of punting, took the ball and ran almost straight to the sidelines, apparently not even trying to get the first down. Lions coach George Wilson took credit for calling the apparent bonehead play. The Giants took over the ball in good field position and scored a TD shortly after to make the score 19 to 17 in favor of New York. Key play in the drive was a long pass completion to end Bob Schnelker on a 4th and very long situation. It looked like nobody covered Schnelker on the play.

Detroit got the ball back and moved the ball into range for a short field goal to win the game. The kick was blocked, I think. The kick looked like it was kicked so low that it would not have made it over the crossbar, even if it wasn't blocked, and was kicked right into the line.

So, the Giants were still alive in the east and ended up playing in "the greatest game ever played" against the Baltimore Colts.

Cleveland head coach Paul Brown may have gotten some revenge on the Lions, though I am not sure that was his intention, by recommending to the Green Bay Packers that they hire Vince Lombardi as their head coach, and the rest is history.

That is an interesting post. I suppose it is possible the Lions purposefully lost that game in the end. That wouldn't fit as "tanking", though, because there were multiple teams with worse records than the Lions.

"Tanking" talk has been generated, I think, by basketball fans who think NFL teams sometimes go into seasons purposefully looking to lose as many games as possible so they can draft a quarterback the following year.

By the "crickets" this thread has received, I am left to believe people find "tanking" to be sheer poppycock.

JWL wrote:That is an interesting post. I suppose it is possible the Lions purposefully lost that game in the end. That wouldn't fit as "tanking", though, because there were multiple teams with worse records than the Lions.

"Tanking" talk has been generated, I think, by basketball fans who think NFL teams sometimes go into seasons purposefully looking to lose as many games as possible so they can draft a quarterback the following year.

By the "crickets" this thread has received, I am left to believe people find "tanking" to be sheer poppycock.

Your idea of tanking appears to be throwing games in order to get an earlier pick in the college draft. I believe that to tank a game or to "go into the tank" is to throw any game for any reason. Going into the tank is a term usually used in boxing as a fighter that throws a fight, like in the Clay/Liston II fight in Lewiston, Maine where some said that it was a "tank job" when Liston was knocked out in the first round by a so-called phantom punch.

Actually, it only would take one or two "motivated" players to throw a football game, such as a defensive back, and/or a place kicker. Even a coach could do it. In the case of the 1958 Detroit Lions, if they did throw the game, i doubt that it was to get an earlier draft choice. There was no love between the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns in those days, and the last thing that the Lions players (and/or coaches) wanted to see was for Cleveland to get another championship.

JWL wrote:"Tanking" talk has been generated, I think, by basketball fans who think NFL teams sometimes go into seasons purposefully looking to lose as many games as possible so they can draft a quarterback the following year.

By the "crickets" this thread has received, I am left to believe people find "tanking" to be sheer poppycock.

Most people understand the difference between basketball and football but you're correct, the people that don't think "get #1 pick and we'll get the NFL = of LeBron and goto a million Super Bowls in a row!" ...

As for NY, I'll see your Jets and raise you the dumbest "fans wanting their team to lose for a better draft pick" situation in NFL history. Which would be the 2010 Seahawks and 'fans' and media in Seattle. There was a legitimate split between people wanting to see their favorite team win the NFC West and goto the playoffs and those that wanted the then 6-9 Seahawks to lose on purpose ("tank") so that they would, "get a better draft pick!"

Only time I'm familiar with where the options were:

A. Your favorite team wins a division championship and has a 1/6 chance of going to the Super Bowl.
or
B. Your favorite team finishes 6-10 and gets the 7th (iirc) overall pick in the draft.

When Seattle scored during the game many 'fans' were complaining and still DURING the game rooting against Seattle and then after the game complaining that they won.

Naturally, those same people that wanted Seattle to lose on purpose were going crazy and happy to be in the playoffs during Marshawn Lynch's famed "Beastquake" run against the Saints just a week later. Also "naturally", I know plenty of people who were on the side of wanting the Seahawks to lose who now wouldn't and won't admit it and try to claim they would never root against the Seahawks. Rare now that you'll find anyone anywhere admit that they wanted the Seahawks to lose against the Rams that game but at the time it was inexplicably close to a 50/50 split.

Saban wrote:Actually, it only would take one or two "motivated" players to throw a football game, such as a defensive back, and/or a place kicker. Even a coach could do it. In the case of the 1958 Detroit Lions, if they did throw the game, i doubt that it was to get an earlier draft choice. There was no love between the Detroit Lions and the Cleveland Browns in those days, and the last thing that the Lions players (and/or coaches) wanted to see was for Cleveland to get another championship.

I recall one anonymous bookie once being quoted that all he'd need is the center, who'd only have to offer up a "bad snap" or two to get the job done.

Not that I believe in it at all, nor am a Steeler-fan who uses those two INTs as an excuse for that particular defeat, but how about the theory that Neil O threw away SBXXX so in the following off-season he could not get signed as much by Pittsburgh and instead go to his favorite team while growing up in NJ - the Jets? Though I vaguely remember actually seeing the press conference at best if I even seen it at all, I believe it was said that late in the ’95 regular season that Neil wore a Jets cap in a post-game press conference.

Onto another sport, wouldn’t you say that the Philadelphia 76ers have been (to utterly no avail at all) ‘tanking’ the last so many seasons?

There was the "all football games are fixed" guy who was here a few years back, saying all the games were fixed and all the players were in on it before his account was suspended and the thread frozen. At that point, he started his own website about game fixing, and cut and pasted our conversations from the PFRA site over at his site to give him more credibility.

74_75_78_79_ wrote: Onto another sport, wouldn’t you say that the Philadelphia 76ers have been (to utterly no avail at all) ‘tanking’ the last so many seasons?

Yes, that team specifically is the cause of this recent phenomenon. There are a number of occurrences in the NBA especially in recent years. Last season the Brooklyn Nets sat down multiple healthy players in the season finale in hopes to acquire some extra lottery balls. This was deemed to be non-competitive because I think the Nets were playing a team fighting for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. I think the Sacramento Kings and/or Phoenix Suns did some things last season that may be considered as tanking.

Somehow we now have NFL fans who think teams should go INTO seasons with the mindset that they must tank. Going back to the Jets, they let go of numerous veterans. Some were not healthy (Eric Decker), some were malcontents (Brandon Marshall, Sheldon Richardson), some were no longer any good (Darrelle Revis), and all were expensive. That type of thing is called rebuilding- not tanking. Tanking is when you purposefully sit players or take other types of measures to attempt to lose games to improve your draft position. There were actually Jets fans this season who were very upset when the Jets went from 0-2 to 3-2.