The Raiders are obviously tanking, but it’s not like you think

Tanking in the NFL has become a headline again after the Raiders’ embarrassing performance Thursday night in a 34-3 loss to third-string QB Nick Mullens. I covered this last season, but I think it’s important to have a refresher course on the ins and outs of tanking when it comes to the NFL because it’s often misunderstood.

Tanking occurs in every sport to different degrees. Most recently, and maybe most famously, it happened in Philadelphia with the Sixers. We’ve seen the Astros do it in MLB, and the Colts in 2011 so they could draft Andrew Luck. The purpose of tanking is being so awful that you get the No. 1 pick and therefore can acquire talent and rebuild your program.

I think tanking can be a viable option to improve your team over time. I agree that being in the middle ground, i.e. 8-8, is the worst spot in sports. You’re not good enough to win the championship or bad enough to get a top draft pick. So tanking does have merit if it’s done correctly.

The misunderstanding of tanking in the NFL begins and ends with the idea that players and coaches try to lose on game day. That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ll explain why using the Raiders from this season.

Winning is everything in the NFL. Winning is the only thing that makes everyone in the building happy. No one wants to lose. No one prepares all week to lose. No player decides they want to lose on game day. Winning is the only feeling I miss about playing in the NFL

The eye in the sky doesn’t lie. As a player, your film is your resume. When your film is evaluated by scouts around the league and it’s subpar, the excuse “well, we were tanking, so I didn’t try hard” doesn’t matter. So players aren’t tanking on game day.

Coaches prepare to win games. They don’t spend almost every waking hour of the week in the facility preparing game plans to lose. Just as the players have the film for their resume, so do the coaches. If you’re looking to hire a coach who’s just been fired off a poor season and a team looking to hire him puts on the film and see his units looking unprepared and running simple concepts, that coach isn’t being hired.

Injuries. If you don’t play hard on the field, you’re going to get yourself and your teammates hurt. Injuries end seasons and end careers. So if you let up during a game, especially for a large part of the game, you’re going to get hurt.

So with all that, tanking can still occur in the NFL, and it’s quite simple. To tank in the NFL you basically compile a terrible roster.

Let’s look at the Raiders. The Raiders traded Khalil Mack. They essentially benched Donald Penn. They traded Amari Cooper. They signed a lot of old players, and while Jon Gruden pretended he wanted to win, they clearly don’t.

However, what makes the Raiders’ tank job even more unique is you typically need a garbage quarterback to tank. If you have a decent enough quarterback, you should be able to win some games. We know that’s the most important position in the sport and quarterbacks can overcome and hide warts around the team. That’s clearly not happening in Oakland.

I do think it’s worth questioning if Derek Carr is the quarterback of the future in Oakland. I promise Gruden is designing game plans to succeed because he wants to see what Carr can do before deciding his fate this offseason.

When teams are tanking you can often see lack of effort in certain situations. It’s not that players are “tanking” during the game. It’s basically they don’t trust or buy into the coaching staff and their play shows it. It’s very rare that you see players give lack of effort for an entire game for all the reasons given above.

So, yes, teams tank. But, no, teams, players and coaches don’t actually tank during the games.