This has me wondering about incentives for kickers. There are teams who attempt a 60-yard field goal or even longer if it’s in the final seconds of a half - after all, nothing to lose. But for a kicker, if he has some incentive that requires him to maintain 90% accuracy throughout the season in order to earn a two-hundred-thousand dollar bonus or something, and is hovering right around the 90.1% percent mark in the season finale, there would be enormous reason for him not to take such a kick. Has any NFL player ever refused to do something because of incentives?
I don’t know, but I’d imagine that’s a hell of a good way to get cut almost immediately.
The shouting heads on ESPN and elsewhere are trashing the Eagles for their clear tank job last night. Couple thoughts on this.
- The Giants fans (NYC media bias in full effect) need to shut the fuck up. You guys SUCKED. When you’re left counting on a 4-10-1 team to win a week 17 matchup, you better look in the mirror.
- Jalen Hurts was better than Sudfeld, but he wasn’t good. People are acting like they benched Mahomes to tank, they probably are losing that game even with Hurts.
- The Eagles moving from the 9th pick to the 6th pick is REALLY VALUABLE. The shouting heads are trying to argue that this minor change in draft status is not worth debasing your franchise over. They are wrong. Maybe moving from 17 to 14 is not worth it, but getting into the top 6 is different this year. A team is very likely to trade up for a QB this year and the Eagles are in the spot a team looking to grab the 3rd best QB needs to target. It’s right ahead of the Lions, Panthers and Broncos (not to mention the Giants, Cowboys and 49ers) all teams with iffy-to-dire QB situations.
That was ugly. I’m a Washington fan, so I’m glad they won, but I feel bad for the Eagles players who were giving their all in a no-consequence (to them) game. The Eagles staff decide that the second half of a close game is the time to put in a QB who has thrown 20 complete passes in five seasons ?! Who then proceeds to thrown an interception, drop the ball, and get sacked ?
Yeah, Kurt Warner, Carson Palmer, Kyler Murray, they were just hideous. Sure the Cards have had some awful QBs over the years, but Fitzgerald has also played with some good ones too.
Oh and how about those Cards controlling their own destiny only to end up on the outside looking in? Cards fans are definitely used to heartbreak, but this one was pretty bad.
I wonder if Wolford might be an up and coming darling next year though. I hear the Patriots need a QB.
They absolutely, clearly tanked. People aren’t “acting like” they tanked, they tanked. Again, Hurts ran it in himself for the only scores that the team got. He wasn’t good, but neither was Washington as a team, and he was good enough to make it a game. Again, they gave up easy points for little to no reason then benched the only reason they had any points to begin with. Doug Pedersen isn’t an idiot, he knew what he was doing, and I’m sure it wasn’t even his call.
Was it the smart move for the franchise to tank? Maybe. I’d even say probably. But it sucks for anyone watching and anyone on the Eagles team who was actually trying.
If any team should have tanked and didn’t, it was the Jets. A few meaningless wins at the end of the year and they lose their #1 pick to Jacksonville. They can’t even lose games properly, that franchise is such a mess. At least they finally let Adam Gase go (that guy shouldn’t be on any NFL team at any level in the future, he’d probably even mess up if he was doing the laundry) which is probably the only positive for them this season.
I agree with those who say the Giants have no business grouching about missing the playoffs at 6-10. Maybe they got confused and thought their record was 10-6.
(I won’t lie though, I was hoping they’d win the division at 6-10, that would be such a perfect fit for the 2020 football season.)
Which is exactly what I said. Not sure why you’re coming at me here.
I misunderstood you then. You’re saying that even though they tanked, that wasn’t part of it. I still disagree with you but nearly not as much then. 
Anyone else in favor of a “division champion” forfeiting their playoff slot if they can’t reach the .500 level, when a much better team likely deserves it more than they do? Divisions at this point are archaic artifacts of a previous age anyway.
I called it a clear tank job, literally using the same words you did.
They tanked and they were right to do so. I’m only making the point that them keeping Hurts in would still have been anything but a sure thing for the Giants hopes.
While I dislike a sub-500 team making the playoffs, I disagree that the divsions are “archaic.” They help to foster rivalries, and give teams specific opponents which they know they will need to do well against to help their chances to make the playoffs, both of which are, I think, good things.
Also, this is the third time in the past 11 seasons that a sub-500 team has made the playoffs (2010 Seahawks, 2014 Panthers). It might be worth noting that both of those teams went on to win their first playoff games.
I’m not in favor of this, but the playoff seeding should be by record, such that the WFT at 7-9 would be the last seed. Div championships should be rewarded with a playoff spot, IMO, but not with an automatic home game.
No, definitely not. You play 6 games in your division, almost 40% of your games. Most teams build their rosters as a reaction to what their divisional opponents are doing. The rivalries are as heated as they were 75 years ago. Winning the division matters, full stop.
The NFC East is an embarrassment, but you don’t blow up the system because of a fluke year.
As long as the scheduling is set up as it is now, division winners should get into the playoffs.
Also, especially now that there are 7 playoff teams per conference, you’re not going to be keeping some great team out. This year, Washington is 8th in the conference at 7-9, and keeping out 7th-place Arizona at 8-8 doesn’t seem like a massive injustice.
Every few seasons, we get a division that features four mediocre-to-bad teams, and it yields a lot of ink (or, these days, e-ink) about it – even more so if it’s an East or West division, as it allows for bad puns about “Least” or “Worst.” It happpens, in the same way that, every few years, there’s a division that winds up stacked with good teams, and you get three, maybe even four teams with winning records in that division.
Does anyone think a 7-9 division winner should automatically get a home playoff game? Wouldn’t it be better if they got an automatic playoff spot, but no automatic home game (i.e. playoff spots are seeded by record, regardless of division championship, except perhaps as a tiebreaker)?
Don’t think I agree with this either. While this year it looks really, really bad, in general I think it’s still the right system. In a loaded division, because of the unbalanced schedule, you can have a 10-6 division winner with 2 or 3 other opponents above .500. In such a case, being 10-6 and winning the division is more impressive and a better credential than a team going 11-5 or 12-4 in a dismal division with 3 sub-500 opponents (aka, pulling a Patriots). Without checking PFR, there have probably been a couple of seasons where either the Steelers or Ravens, whichever was the wild card, finished at 11-5 or 10-6 and had a road game. But they had that record by virtue of being in the same division with the Bengals and Browns both being sub-5 win teams. That’s not necessarily better than one of the AFC South teams winning a tough division at 10-6 or 9-7 with 4 teams at 7 wins or better.
No. We shouldn’t hysterically change the rules because of the occasional rare event. One crappy 8-8 team not making it instead isn’t the end of the world.
Right, and in addition you can have bad luck with the other divisions you have to face. This year, the NFCE had to play the AFCN and NFCW, which is a pretty tough group. But since everyone in the division played those same teams, comparing records within the division is pretty fair.
Having said that, I wouldn’t object to just seeding the playoffs by record. There are situations at the top where this would come up, too. Like a couple years ago, when the Chiefs and Chargers had the best AFC records, but the Chargers were the 5 seed instead of the 2.
Yes, but it’s really maybe only once a decade where an entire division is truly abysmal. For example, back in 2011 the AFC West had 3 teams at 8-8 and one at 7-9. In 2013 the NFC North had a 8-7-1, 8-8 and 7-9 team. In 2014 the AFC South had a 7-8-1, 7-9 and 6-10 team which was probably the closest we came to a year like this.
More often than not a 8-8 division winner comes out of a 4-team scrum. This year WTF’s title is uncommonly dubious.