Earlier this spring, NFL insider Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated revealed that “there hasn’t been much of an appetite for” the league to adopt a draft lottery rather than using final regular-season records to determine which teams hold the best picks in a player-selection process.
For a mailbag published on Wednesday, Breer expanded on why it’s unlikely the NFL will embrace a draft lottery anytime soon.
“There’s the idea that adding a weighted draft lottery might lead to more tanking, not less, with mediocre teams that aren’t quite at the bottom trying to game the system to increase their odds of getting a high pick (especially in a quarterback-rich year),” Breer wrote. “Then, there’s the reality that tanking hasn’t been nearly the problem for the NFL that it has been for the NBA.”
Multiple teams have provided examples to prove Breer’s second point over the past few years. In the final week of the 2022 regular season, the Houston Texans successfully ran a late two-point conversion play that ultimately cost Houston the right to grab quarterback Bryce Young with the first pick of the 2023 draft. The 2023 New York Giants were a 2-8 team seemingly headed nowhere when an undrafted rookie quarterback named Tommy DeVito guided them to three straight wins.
This past January, the New England Patriots notched a meaningless Week 18 victory over the Buffalo Bills that gifted the Tennessee Titans with the opportunity to make quarterback Cam Ward the first selection of this year’s draft.
“Maybe, above all else, there’s the league’s ethos,” Breer added for Wednesday’s piece. “The NFL wants to protect parity, and the best way to do that is to take from the rich and give to the poor. That happens with the salary cap forcing good teams to bleed second-tier players in free agency, and the draft system is also set up this way. If you don’t want bad teams to be perpetually bad, the best way to accomplish that is to arm them with resources to dig out of such holes. I do think that’s a priority for the NFL.”
Giants general manager Joe Schoen is among the noteworthy members of the football community who have made it known this offseason that they oppose the NFL possibly adopting a draft lottery. For what it’s worth, the league probably wouldn’t make such a massive change regarding how teams acquire talent before the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFL Players Association expires after the 2030 season.
