A500
Active Roster
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2016
- Messages
- 108
- Reaction score
- 63
I agree with the first part of your post but totally disagree with the last part. It is never in any teams favor to tank for a season. Reasons why:
1) There are no guarantee's that drafted players will play up to their potential in the NFL, mostly due to the speed the game is played at and not having a mentality to learn new systems that are different from what they did in college. I see teams that have a less than 50% success rates with their drafted players.
2) Character issues. It is bad and getting worse! Many players come into the NFL thinking they are "Mr. Wonderful" or some kind of super hero. Teams are lucky if they can just get Mr. Reliable. This is tougher to evaluate than football skill. There are more than enough characters in the draft. Not as many of the NFL hopefuls have character. It is personnel character that will help them get through the hardest parts of transitioning to the NFL. I feel this is just as important as a players skill level.
3) A lack of maturity and self discipline! This is endemic among draftees. Some have it but many other do not.
4) Tanking has never helped in developing a winning attitude. Every team has faced bad seasons for any number of reasons. It's character, not high draft picks that you need to get yourself through adversity.
- These men have been focused on getting to the NFL all their lives, It is a shame that many of these players fail to understand that once they are drafted, the work gets harder, not easier. They do not have it made; they are in a position to "have it made" once the succeed, but they are not there yet.
- Many young players are coming into a job that provides them more money then they ever saw in their life and are not knowledgeable concerning what to do with it. You can't tell them do what to do with their money. The NFL has started training programs so these young men don't get blindsided by fame and fortune. Clearly, this is a widespread problem if the NFL has to prepare the new players for non-football issues.
- Many of these young men have some interests off the field that will negatively effect their playing ability. Any special treatment that had been given them due to their football skills as they progressed through high School and college now actually works against them now in the form of a lack of self discipline. When they finally recognize the problems that they have made for themselves they are often broke, addicted to some drug or behavior that now controls their lives, and find their "friends" can't or won't help them and that the NFL has moved on from them because they have lost their value as a player.
Do you really think it is worth tanking in order to get a higher draft picks after considering the reasons I have put forth not to tank?
It's true. Nothing is guaranteed in the draft and with what the team went through with Dion Jordan I completely agree that character issues are probably with people coming out of the draft but I've seen two winning seasons since becoming a fan.
Year in and year out they are, for the most part, they have been slightly below .500. And those kind of seasons seem to keep them suspended around the same position.
Since those kind of seasons don't seem to help and winning seasons are not a given tanking is really the only thing I can think of that might work.
While teams should be looking to build their team through the later part of the draft, some teams are just better at it than others. I'd just really like to see Miami have a shot at picking one of "the best possible at their position" instead of hoping for a "raw talent" to pan out