Argument

[wab]

It's not like throwing that Niners game would've been easy. It was 26-6. Jordan ran it 32 times. Barkley only threw 18 passes. And missed 7.

It's hard to throw a game when your opponent is trying to do the same thing.

[o-pus #40 in B major]

It's not like throwing that Niners game would've been easy. It was 26-6. Jordan ran it 32 times. Barkley only threw 18 passes. And missed 7.

It's hard to throw a game when your opponent is trying to do the same thing.

[BamaBear09]

It's too easy to look back on pointless wins as wasted opportunities to tank. This is low hanging fruit, but I understand what you're arguing.

You also need to look at it in the context of the season. Barkley was giving fans something to cheer for in an injury plagued season (at the time). Jordan Howard went for 117 yards & 3 touchdowns in an awesome snowy victory.

It was a nice breath of fresh air in a season that smelled like revolting shit.

I don't want a roster full of guys who willingly tank because of the greater good of the organization, so I'm not too peeved about it.

Let's look at the Bears history of glorious 3rd round picks recently:

Jonathan Bullard
Hroniss Grasu
Will Sutton
Brandon Hardin
Chris Conte
Major Wright
Jarron Gilbert
Juaqin Iglesias
Earl Bennett
Marcus Harrison
Garrett Wolfe
Michael Okwo

I could break out the Bears history of drafting in the first round as a counter... basically this team has a good draft every few years and that's about it, which is why the team only goes to the playoffs every few years... remember this is the same team that selected Curtis Enis and Cedric Benson in the top 5 of their respective drafts... I was super excited beginning this draft and as soon as I saw the Bears had traded up, I was deflated because I knew it was for someone I really didn't want... didn't like Trubisky pre draft and the only thing that's going to change that is seeing him play well. I just doubt he's going to do that.

[Atkins&Rebel]

Tanking is for people with no self respect.
A team with no self respect will not magically find it again.
Beware what you wish for.

[wab]

NFL teams don't tank. At best they might not put themselves in the best position to win. But they don't outright tank. I'm not sure why this is even a thing.

[docc]

^^ THIS

and Atkins..

[Moriarty]

This whole argument is a giant string of ridiculousness, based on sloppy semantics and muddling all sorts of distinct concepts together.

• Is losing meaningless games better for a TEAM than winning meaningless games in the long run?
There are examples of both, but the overwhelming majority of the time (particularly in football), the TEAM is better off losing them. The 2016 win over SF G08 presented is an excellent example of this.

• Should PLAYERS deliberately throw games by going on the field and deliberately playing worse than they are capable?
Of course not. This virtually never happens (you’d damage your career, lose teammate trust, and are more likely to get hurt half-assing it), nor is it what anyone is suggesting. Move on.

• Should MANAGEMENT (GM and HC, primarily) play to lose?
Absolutely not and absolutely yes, depending on what type of ‘playing to lose’ you are talking about.

Deliberately teaching players bad technique or wrong assignments, cancelling all their practices, setting up a gameplan everyone knows is doomed to fail/calling bad plays on purpose, and telling players the team would be better off losing would have horrible impacts. And again, no one does this and no one is suggesting you should do this.

On the other hand, there are other types of ‘playing to lose’ that are different. When you have a young star who is struggling through an injury and you decide to shut them down for the season (or even sit them for a game or two more than you might in different circumstances), because the season is hopeless and you don’t want to ruin them, that is ‘playing to lose’. You are deliberately making your chances of winning in the short run worse, because improving your chances of winning in the longer run is more important. When (moreso in sports with longer seasons than football) you give players “rest days”, you are ‘playing to lose’ by deliberately making your chances of winning in the short run worse, because improving your chances of winning in the longer run is more important. When you cut aging, expensive veterans, because you’d rather develop a younger, cheaper player, who isn’t as good as the vet yet, but probably will be in the future, you are ‘playing to lose’ by deliberately making your chances of winning in the short run worse in order to improve your chances of winning in the long run. And the same thing goes for benching established vets late in a lost season, and bringing the kids in to evaluate and develop them. Deliberately making your chances of winning in the short run worse in order to improve your chances of winning in the long run.
Management ‘playing to lose’ is a very, very long-standing tradition in all major team sports with ongoing franchises. It’s been going on for longer than you’ve been alive. And nearly all fans endorse doing it at some point to some degree. This is the kind of behavior that people saying they want to see their team lose out are endorsing.

• Should FANS root for their team to lose?
First off, despite the illusion everyone likes to buy into of fan sentiment being critical, it isn’t that impactful. Me sitting in my basement, watching the game and thinking “I want the Bears to lose to SF” vs me sitting in my basement, watching the game and thinking “I want the Bears to beat to SF” doesn’t do anything to directly impact the game. Field goals don’t go straight or wide because you sat there wishing for it hard enough. Collectively, fanbase sentiment about whether winning meaningless games matters or not has perhaps a small impact on team strategy.

However, suppose we dismiss the impactfulness part of rooting, and just consider the “what would make you happier” part of it. Ask yourself, what brings you more satisfaction as a fan? Winning a pointless game or getting a better draft pick, which will give you hope for the future and, potentially win you a lot more than just one game, and games that matter? There’s no empirically, provably “right” answer, but to me – unless you plan on dying or ceasing to follow the team forever within the next few months – the answer is pretty overwhelmingly obvious. In situations like late 2016, I root for the team to play decently, but lose a close game, due to a bad call, slip on a wet field, tipped ball deflecting to the other team, or other fluke circumstance, because a better draft pick will make me a lot happier than a pointless, quickly forgotten win will.