Play a Tournament for Draft Position
What does the NFL love more than just about anything? More football.
More football means more revenue for the league. Imagine if the NFL simply seeded the worst eight teams and they played a single elimination tournament that determined NFL Draft seeding. Win three games, get the number one pick. The runner-up picks second, the “championship game” losers go third and fourth with the worst regular season record picking higher, and so on.
Play the games on Mondays and Thursdays during January. I bet the ratings would match or exceed random regular season games. You’d have in-game hits from draft experts like Mel Kiper and Todd McShay breaking down both teams’ needs and the mock draft. The “championship” game could be called the Draft Bowl, and it could be sponsored by Clorox.
The 2021 Draft Bowl, presented by Clorox. Clorox, our bleach can even clean up the Jacksonville Jaguars and New York Jets. Just don’t drink it!
The biggest complications would be getting the NFLPA on board, condensing the offseason for teams most in need of offseason changes, and complicating the coaching carousel timeline.
I think getting the players on board might be simpler than imagined.
First, you exclude all players over the age of 30 or who have started more than 50 games from playing in the games or practicing in the leadup. This reduces the injury risk to players later in their career, who are probably going to benefit the least from extra football. Young players who are still developing get the extra practice and game reps. If this is an issue in terms of depth, you could shorten the games down to 10 minute quarters.
You would also pay the players extra – playoff players get bonuses of $25,000 or more per game (as high as $118,000 for the Super Bowl winners). You could create a similar structure, and those amounts would be more meaningful to younger players who had earned less over their careers.
Next challenge, condensing the offseason. I don’t really care, point blank. Play better! If this generates a couple hundred million in extra revenue for the league, adds interest for the fans, and protects the integrity of late season games, it’s well worth it. The offseason is six to seven months, a few teams losing a few weeks is not a big enough deal to squash the idea.
Finally, impacting the coaching carousel. I think it’s unfair to give the worst teams in the league a disadvantage by making them wait a few more weeks to fire/hire new coaches, and there would be a lot of drama making a change before these games. Of course, that drama means more content for sports talk shows on radio and tv, and more for writers to pontificate about – all of which is good for the league.
But I actually think this could solve another problem. Assistant coaches on playoff teams can be at somewhat of a disadvantage in that the more they win, the more their potential hiring by teams with job openings gets delayed. Teams don’t want to risk waiting and missing out, so this can cost good coaches jobs and lead to weaker hirings.
So just delay the date of the first hiring of coaches for the next league year until a couple days after the Super Bowl. Problem solved. The coaching carousel would happen in early February instead of early January, there would still be more than two months before the draft, and things would proceed normally.
Like I said, it’s an outside the box idea, but it would fix the problem, and personally I think it would be fun to watch and garner good ratings. What more could the NFL hope for in a solution?