Yeah, Intentionally Losing Always Helps

December 11, 2009 at 12:59pm by Scott   •  7 Comments »

For the second day in a row, Tom Balog of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is stirring the pot with one of his articles. And today’s is worse than yesterday’s as he is telling the Bucs that they need to throw their last four games in order to be first in line to draft (sigh) Ndamukong Suh. He starts off his article with a blatantly false assumption.

The 1-11 Buccaneers have nothing to gain by winning any of their remaining four games.

The future of the franchise will be most affected not by whether this team wins two games, or three games, four or five games in 2009.

It will be most impacted by how this season sets up the dominoes for next April’s NFL draft.

I completely disagree with this. For the team to be able to come together and steadily improve enough to win their last couple games would be a major accomplishment. The players and coaches need to find that formula where the coaches are running the schemes and calling the plays that best fit their players. They’ll only find out for sure if it’s working in real games. Succeeding in that and winning some would give them something to build off of for next season.

When people talk about the draft in December, they’re talking about the first round of the draft. One player per team. And no one rookie, regardless of how great they were in college, is going to benefit the team more than the, say, 16 or 17 starters that rollover into next season getting actual playing time in Raheem Morris‘s defense and Greg Olson‘s offense. I would rather they be four games ahead of that curve than have the extra draft slotting that they would lose by winning.

All that should matter for the Buccaneers is doing all they can to get the highest possible draft choice.

Yeah, you go tell that to the veteran players who are out there sweating and bleeding every Sunday. They give precisely zero fucks for a rookie they’ve never met. All that matters to the players is the team winning and their own paychecks, not necessarily in that order. How does throwing games benefit either of those things for them? Some of these veterans are going to get cut in the offseason. Do they really want to put on tape intentionally missing blocks or whiffing on tackles for the teams they’re going to interview with next season?

This is a game of men and respect and honor and all that macho bullshit. How would they even be able to live with themselves if they let teams score on them on purpose? Can you imagine the respect that would be lost from the opposing team to line up against the Bucs, when they look them in the eye and allow themselves to be run over? Any player who would go along with Balog’s plan is a player that shouldn’t be in professional football.

All that win and any others would do is make it more costly next spring to acquire the player the Buccaneers need most to draft.

You don’t think the Bucs could learn a hell of a lot by seeing what plays work and what plays don’t and by Josh Freeman succeeding? Imagine that for a second… the Bucs winning their last four games on Josh Freeman’s back, him throwing three or four touchdowns per game and really getting into a rhythm. You don’t think that would fire this team up for next year? You don’t think that would benefit the 2010 season more than some kid who we don’t know anything about yet? You’re crazy.

”I hear you with the theory of lose by winning, get a better player and all that stuff,” Morris said. “But as we all know, the draft is a lottery and you don’t always win.”

Your draft slot is opportunity. The higher your slot, the greater your opportunity, it’s true. But Morris is right, there’s never any certainty in the draft. You know what it certain? Wins now. Education now. Chemistry now.

So, whether he’ll admit it or not, it’s in his own best interest for the team to draft Suh.

Balog doesn’t even acknowledge the idea of there being other players in the draft. Does Suh have some kind of mass-hypnotic power or something? I remember this kind of stuff when Calvin Johnson came out in 2007. Johnson put up some good numbers last year while their team sank to 0-16. His numbers aren’t as good this year, and his team is still shit. No one player (except possibly a quarterback) can single-handedly carry a team to more wins. This whole Suh suckoff is gonna get real fucking old by April.

Buccaneers general manager Mark Dominik was in the organization when Tampa Bay drafted Warren Sapp in 1995 and he knows how vital a defensive tackle is to the Tampa 2, one-gap scheme defense the team is going to run again, just as it did with Sapp under former defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin.

Well, thank you, Tom, for making my point for me. The Bucs were 6-10 in 1994 and Sapp was selected with the 12th overall pick. Ki-Jana Carter was the “can’t miss” #1 pick by the Bengals that year — that worked out well. Sapp wasn’t even the first defensive lineman from that draft. Kevin Carter and Mike Mamula were both taken before Sapp. Mamula went on to become, and still is, the poster boy for overhyped combine results. But yet for two months, people would have traded their children to be able to draft him.

Dominik, who has a Big 12 background, will do everything he can come April to wheel and deal to land Suh.

Umm… this doesn’t sound like speculation even though it clearly is. Does Balog have some inside knowledge that Dominik is favoring Suh, or is he just assuming that since he is swinging from Suh’s ball sac that everyone else is as well?

But he won’t be successful, unless Morris and his players give him a top three overall first-round pick to work with.

They’ve been on that path all season.

So why not finish the job?

So throw the games? This is not a Buccaneers fan, folks. This is a sportswriter with a weird fetish for a 22-year old college kid.