Do NFL teams purposely TANK for higher picks?

i'd say every sport has it happen

 

You have to define tanking. Are we talking about trading every asset the team has in order to be just painfully awful for three years(76ers)? Or are we talking about teams just being worse than they really thought they would be and rolling with it in order to improve?

I haven't seen a team do anything like teams in the NBA do.

I think some NFL teams know they're going to be bad, sometimes really bad, and high draft picks will be the result of it. The Jaguars knew they were going to be awful last year and would get a high pick. I think the Titans knew they were going to be bad this season and had a plan if that happened(bench Locker and go with Mett).

The NFL is just so much bigger than one player though, especially if the QBs at the top of the draft aren't very good that year.

In basketball one draft pick is 20% of your starting lineup, not 4%.

 

Its hard to prove it, but I definitely think Indy tanked for their 1st pick in 2012. And heres why.

They go winless all year til they see the Titans late in the year, they beat us, beat Houston, and look like they've figured it out, then all of a sudden when they look over and see St. Louis losing out, they quickly decide; hey we better stop winning or else. Then in the final moments of the 2011 season they give up to the Jags by not trying an onside kick with a few mins to go? Seems fishy to me.

 

I don't think players tank. They might check out by the end of the year and stop caring, but they don't tank.

I think coaching and management tanks though. They will play their less talented players in order to 'evaluate' them (which I am sure is part of it), but you know that they want to lose some games for a higher draft pick too.

I don't think the coaches and/or players go out and deliberately fumble the ball or take knees or whatever. Its more of just having a 'giving up' mentality than anything.

I do believe that the Colts tanked for Luck. And I think Caldwell did it willingly. I don't think he ever thought he would be fired for that.

 

And Jim Caldwell got rewarded for towing the company line by getting fired.

Don't believe it.