NFL Draft Lottery: Only A Matter Of Time?
The NHL and NBA have a lottery system when it comes to their drafts. The NFL, of course, currently does not. It’s as simple as it gets. Reverse order in terms of record. Will the league ever change its rules to include an NFL Draft lottery system? It appears there may be traction heading that way.
Former Saints head coach Sean Payton is now on record for saying that it’s only a matter of time before the rules change. Maybe even as soon as whenever Caleb Williams is ready to enter the NFL.
“It’s healthy when we in scouting like to say ‘well, who does he remind you of?’ Payton said. “And we’re not putting that pressure on Caleb to be the next Mahomes and ‘oh, you’re gonna be the next Mahomes’ it’s just, it’s very good to be like ‘he’s like this.’ And so, I brought it up yesterday on the show, I think he’s a generational player and I’ve seen three or four games, obviously not as many as I would if I was truly doing the evaluation, but at some point, especially with the relationship the league has in gaming now, at some point, we’re going to move to a lottery system in the NFL. Because this is the kind of player who does that where, at the end of the season, here you are in Week call it 14, 12, teams begin to lose to put themselves in that position.”
“That hasn’t been a problem to date in this league as we know it, but it very well could have been,” Payton said. “We’ve had two teams that I know who lost games. Tampa Bay, Lovie Smith, great coach, a good friend, and we’re losing to the Buccaneers in the last game of the season and all of their starters were pulled. All of the linebackers were pulled and I’m on the headphones in the third quarter asking ‘what do you mean Levonte David is out?’ And right away, they were at the one spot and if they won that game they risked going to the two spot and they wanted to select Jameis Winston, so that actually happened. It happened at 1 pm, on a small market game and it just disappeared in Tampa and we never talked about it. Now last year, on a national stage, or two years ago, I forget, Philadelphia took out their starting quarterback and put in Nate Sudfeld and I thought ‘what are they doing in this?’ and it was on Monday Night Football or Sunday Night Football and it was a problem for the league. And it was a problem because Philly wanted to stick at the five or the six spot, there was nothing that they were playing for. You’re always playing for something, you always lose a little bit of your locker room when you do that I think, but this player I think is the type of player we look back on in five years and say ‘he’s why the lottery exists now.’ And if I were to say, who is the worst team in the league now?”
We can argue about the tanking thing but I’m not sure it’s a current problem in the NFL. Who’s really tanking right now? Even the Bears who would have the second overall pick today just gave up their second rounder for Chase Claypool to try to improve the team. Sorry, but the Oklahoma City Thunder just aren’t doing that.
If we’re being real, tanking should be way more of a problem than it is. If I’m running a team, you bet your ass I’m tanking for Caleb Williams. It won’t be nearly as bad of a problem that it should be.
Personally, I think I’m out on the lottery but am not totally opposed to it. It would be nice to have a team that actually runs their team well get the first pick more often.
