The Atlanta Falcons picked up their second win of the season last Thursday against their division rival, Carolina. Fans should be excited about winning, right?
Yet after the game, all I could see is how the victory mostly drew the ire from fans on social media. Now at 2-6, with the Saints and Buccaneers firmly leading the division and many more extremely viable playoff candidates in the conference, there is little to no chance of doing anything of merit this year. So is it even a good thing that the Falcons won? Is it still worth it to try and win games?
The short answer is yes.
No matter how you look at it, the Falcons are staring a rebuild in the face. In a short time, the Falcons will be ushering in a new era with fresh faces at coach and general manager. Regardless of that, that loathsome t-word should still be avoided at all costs. Tanking is not what you think it is. I say that, because it does not work in the NFL.
'Lose now, so that you can win later' is the thought behind tanking. It would seem reasonable that if a team can’t go any higher, why not position yourself for future success? While many refuse to admit they are committing this heinous act, but wouldn’t you rather lose now to acquire better draft capital tomorrow? This is all well and good, assuming that the first round of any draft offers any degree of surety.
But that’s not the case.
“Tank for Trevor” is the new phrase heard around the league’s cellar. Trevor Lawrence is next in a seemingly endless line of can’t-miss prospects. But how are those teams that “Sucked for Luck” (Andrew Luck) or “Sucked for the Duck” (Marcus Mariota)? Both teams that earned the right to pick those guys are starting different quarterbacks this season. In fact, if you go back to 1999, only one of the 28 quarterbacks selected in the top five has ever led his team to a Super Bowl victory (Eli Manning), 14 of 28 have a losing record, and only two have an MVP. That isn’t a lot of success for a “can’t miss prospect.”
A first-round pick is, by all measures, a very good football player, but scouting in the NFL is as much about luck as it a science. How else do so many absolute gems like Grady Jarrett fall to pick 137? It’s because there is a perpetual swirl of uncertainty that envelops each NFL draft. According to a study back in 2018, there’s only a 53 percent chance that a first-round pick even works out. There is absolutely no guarantee that those players will actually work out, so why blow everything up to go get them?
What is guaranteed is that there will always be plenty of star power throughout the first round. Impact players like Patrick Mahomes, JJ Watt, Deshaun Watson, Aaron Donald, and Lamar Jackson were all picked OUTSIDE of the top 10. What the Falcons need to worry about is securing a general manager that can find those annually available diamonds in the rough and pair him with a coach that can turn those selections into professionals. That decision is not up to the players, so why not play your best football each week to attract top management and coaching? These guys are paid to win football games, and that gets me into my next point.
We’re rapidly approaching a disappointing stage of the season where Atlanta won’t have much to play for in terms of playoff aspirations, but these are still professional athletes. They are paid to play football at the highest level every single week. To ask them to not play their best is insulting, not to mention the odds of injury increase exponentially when a player doesn’t play hard (heaven forbid an offensive lineman takes some plays off). This isn’t Major League Baseball where you can pitch a minor league arm and have the other team run up the score. The only thing that would get hurt there is the team’s ERA. This is a violent sport that requires full-go at all times.
These guys are playing for their jobs every week and what they put on tape matters. No one ultimately knows who will be on the active roster next week, much less next season. With that being the case, these guys are always playing for that next contract. That’s their job and you’d be asking them, against their very nature as professional athletes, to tank. That competitive edge is how they survive in this league.
The Twitterverse may not like this opinion, but I just don’t get how someone can cheer for teams to admit defeat and just toss it up. Tanking just doesn’t work in the NFL. If it did, why have the same concoction of teams been failing to make something out of it? It’s because losing quickly becomes a culture. There’s a good reason teams like the Jets, Browns, Bengals, Dolphins, Jaguars and others can’t seem to get out of the rut. These are teams that have lost for so long, that they seem incapable of ever getting out it. How any fan would want that for the Falcons, I will never know.
To cheer for intentionally losing is a slippery slope that must be avoided at all costs; pick be damned. Playing defeated football stunts the potential development of young players. Instill the winning attitude in your players and it will pay off later in ways that a better draft pick likely won’t.
Maybe you’ve checked out on the Falcons and you just want to look forward to next season. But this team and these players don’t have that luxury. So stop it with the tank talk, it just doesn’t work.
