In the NFL, Resting Good, Tanking Bad
A football nit that I regrettably must pick
Happy New Year, folks! Before we get into it this week, I wanted to quickly do the year-ender thing. A short word of thanks and a little retrospective.
We just about 3x’d our audience this year, which is great, so thank you so much for spending your Friday mornings with us. If you do happen to be new here, these were the five most-read pieces of 2024, which must mean they were the best. Steep yourself in that esteemed history, which I think nicely illustrates our range around here.
⚾ The Shohei Ohtani Scandal (3/22)
🎾 There Are No GOAT Debates (8/9)
🏈 There Is No Solving Physicality in Football (10/25)
🏀 How NBA Champions Fade (11/8)
⚜️ The Brief Wondrous Career of Zion Williamson (12/20)
Second, and by far my favorite, 2024 was the year I published a six-episode docuseries on the tenuous state of the NCAA. It’s good, if I do say so myself, and accidentally prescient. Please go and check that out if you haven’t already. You can throw it on for those New Years’ resolution workouts you and everyone else at my Crunch Fitness (as if you needed any more evidence that I’m a man of the people) are absolutely crushing to start the year.
Great! Now that that’s settled. Just about every year, right around this time, some dirty words start to make their way through football. The first one’s tanking, and the second is resting. Rest? Whatever. Stick with me.
In the college game, owing in part to the topics we cover in the above podcast series, skipping non-playoff bowl games has become common practice for NFL-bound draft prospects. There was a whole dustup this week over Cam Ward, the likely top-five pick who quarterbacks Miami, playing the first half of the Pop-Tarts Bowl and then sitting for the second.
In my opinion, by the way, that’s how Pop-Tarts should be prepared. Half-baked is the right approach. You shouldn’t be in the Pop-Tarts business for crispiness. Get those things outta there.
In my other opinion, the Ward debate betrayed a lot of contradictions. Voiced shrilly, I might add. I think it’s a little weird how much we’ve all collectively agreed, apart from the schools and sponsors that make money off of them, that these sorts of bowl games just don’t matter enough to care about as much as any old regular-season game.
You’ll notice that Ward, nor anyone else that I can remember, pulls this kind of thing on any other kind of game (unless you’re counting that UNLV drama from earlier this year, which is another kooky side-effect of how the sport is changing).
I’m not too concerned with the Ward situation, much as I’m not too concerned with guys skipping these bowl games altogether. I’m not sure I personally would do that, but I can’t very well blame these, yes, professional athletes for looking out for their careers.
Too much is made of the “quitting on your team” angle by people who don’t have any idea what the reaction is actually like in these locker rooms. So I’m sure there are cases where this gets out of hand, but my guess is, on teams where a lot of guys have their eyes on the NFL, there’s a recognition that your teammates have a right to look out for their careers. Fine by me. Go ahead.
Among fans, where the anger comes from is what I’ll refer to as competitive integrity: the idea that going out there and playing to win is the whole spirit of the game, right down to the studs. It’s why we play sports. I happen to be sympathetic to that.
But I do want to point out how unevenly that standard gets applied, and I’ll do that by asking a question. In the NFL, why is it okay for a good team to sit its starters in a Week 18 game, since they have nothing to play for, but it’s not okay for a bad team to do the same thing because they have nothing to play for?
Is that down to intention? The fact that the good team doesn’t really want to lose their last game, but wouldn’t care if they do, because their playoff seed is already locked up? Which would distinguish them from the bad team that kinda does want to lose, because their draft pick is not locked?
Or what if the good team could even drop a spot in playoff seeding, but one of their best players is dinged up and they want to give him a week on the shelf? That happens all year, and most people rightly think that’s okay. I heard tons of people calling for the Chiefs to sit Mahomes a few weeks ago, and now he is going to sit for this last one.
For years, top seeds have taken their foot off the gas, phoning in a final game, occasionally even two — which do purportedly matter, because all the games matter, right? — and nobody seems to take much issue with that. You do what you’ve gotta do to put your team in the best position to win in the long run. Fair enough, right?
This can take less obvious forms, even, than the Chiefs example, who’ve locked up the first seed and will march Carson Wentz out there on Sunday. Take the Rams, who would play the top overall seed in the NFC, either the Lions or Vikings, if they lose this weekend and will instead get the Commanders or Packers if they win. Most teams would rather play out the latter situation. But not Sean McVay and the Rams, asked about rest this week:
“Relative to what’s at risk, what’s at reward in terms of either or, and being able to maybe get some guys that are — you know, the toll that a season takes — get them back, refreshed, rejuvenated. Typically, we’ve erred on the side of leaning a little bit more towards that and I would imagine as we continue to finalize our plans, that’s probably the direction we’ll go.”
Rest is so valuable to the Rams that McVay would rather play the best team in the conference. That stood out to me. Huge day for rest. And on Sunday, no less? Massive.
So how much does that differ, really, from a 3-13 team sitting starters in Week 18 to try and lock up the #1 draft pick? I’m not even advocating for that, necessarily, but I am asking why a lot of us seem to agree that’s bad and the other thing isn’t.
You wouldn’t begrudge Drew Lock going out there and making a case for a contract, as he did last week, and you wouldn’t ask Brian Daboll to go over to him and say: hey, throw this one, would you? We like that Ward guy.
It just so happens that doing exactly that would have put the Giants in the best position to win in the long run, which is where the tanking vs. resting thing can get a little fuzzy. Because they did not do that, the Giants could very easily end up as low as 4th and miss out on a quarterback, again, if both the Browns and Titans pick before them.
That’s bad! Or at least could be. We don’t know if either Shedeur Sanders or Cam Ward will be any good in the NFL, but if you’re the Giants, those are the guys on your board, aren’t they? I’m all for building a culture, and stiff-arming the Colts out of the playoffs might be good for that in the long run, but aren’t the Giants still… 4-13 without a quarterback? That’s just being bad at being bad.
Now, it’s worth admitting: I wouldn’t want to be the coach who walked into the bad team’s locker room and told the guys, many of whom are playing for roles and contracts elsewhere, that they’re not suiting up. You also can’t just tell guys to go out and dog it in a sport like football where that can get people seriously hurt.
So I get where someone like Jerod Mayo is coming from, when he denies that the Patriots have an eye on the draft. He’s also probably coaching for his future job security, though the damage may be done there.
I understand that this front office perspective isn’t as popular in those locker rooms, where, in most organizations, those decisions are being made. I also understand that this can have grave ramifications if you go overboard, as the Process Sixers (in)famously did all those years ago to very little (positive) effect. Things could have been so different, Ben Simmons. RIP.
You shouldn’t be doing this every week, and you sure as shit shouldn’t be doing this for multiple years. It’s good to keep your eye on winning. Even a teardowns will need to eventually be rebuilt on something. I just think that maybe we can take it easy on the whole ‘we’re too proud to lose’ thing when you’ve already proven perfectly capable of losing a lot.
🏈 This Ohio State team could earn itself the full piece treatment if their season keeps going like this. To get embarrassed by your arch rival at home, and then go on to completely dismantle two very good teams in Tennessee and Oregon, says plenty already about the value of a good wake-up call. They’re awake now, and there’s a ton of credit due for the turnaround.
🏈 I read a lot of lines that make me jealous I didn’t write them. Staying with the CFP games, and the Arizona State RB that made it a game against Texas after vomiting on the sideline. Big rugby energy, might I add.
coining “Skatteboot-and-rally” is an early frontrunner for the best of 2025. Fantastic. Just fantastic. Straight to college football Valhalla indeed.🏒 I’m not a very good Blues fan, but I did watch the Winter Classic. It was not a good game, but it was the kind of bad game that I’ll accept. I don’t think the Blues are a real threat to win anything anytime soon, but as we’ve been on the subject of foundations and rebuilds, it’s nice to see a little bit of juice from St. Louis. Gretzky was all for it. Oh, and there was also a fight. Think we lost that one, but hey. Why not?
🏀 Everybody’s all about fixing basketball lately. My unhelpful question: is there really that much to fix? I’m as guilty of this as the next guy, but NBA-heads are more prone to nervous self-reflection than some party-line Democrats I know. Bad example, and there will always be room for improvements — you could talk me into moving back the three-point line, for instance — but I think Adam Silver under truth serum would tell you he’s perfectly happy with basketball settling in as America’s second sport. There are worse places to be. Like baseball, basketball’s fine.