Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: with a loss on Sunday, the final week of the season, the New York Giants have a chance to secure the No. 1 overall pick in the upcoming NFL Draft.
It’s a familiar scenario for Giants fans late in the season. Some fans would rather lose in order to improve the team’s draft stock. Others want to win because, well, who in their right mind would root for their team to lose?
CBS NFL insider Jonathan Jones hears the noise from Giants fans, and he believes it’s nonsense. Appearing on CBS Sports HQ after the Giants’ 34-17 win over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon, Jones called rooting for a better draft pick over rooting for your team to win “loser mentality.”
“I think it’s a loser mentality. I want to be very clear. I think rooting for your team when they have a quarterback, it’s Jaxson Dart, when they are facing, last week, a team in the Las Vegas Raiders, you can’t possibly lose to — they are tanking harder than you can imagine. And then you have the Dallas Cowboys starting Dak Prescott, a team that you haven’t beaten since we were all masking up. And you are throwing, if you are Jaxson Dart, you are throwing to [Gunner] Olszewski, Tyrone Tracy, [Daniel] Bellinger, and [Darius] Slayton. Those were the only four guys who caught passes. Who is supposed to be inactive?” Jones questioned. “And then you say, ‘Oh, well sit Jaxson Dart.’ You think Jameis Winston is gonna go out there and throw the game? You think Russell Wilson’s gonna throw the game? So how could you actually lose?
“I do understand, I can conceive of, ‘Oh, let’s lose so we can get a higher draft pick.’ But usually you want the higher draft pick so you can get the quarterback. You have the quarterback. The quarterback has not won in months. And there is a consequence to losing to really bad teams. There would be a consequence to losing to the Raiders for this team. And do not sit here and say that I’m talking about building momentum into the offseason. I want to be very clear, I do not believe in momentum. But here’s what I do believe. I do believe that these guys need to understand what winning is like. I do believe they need to understand what building a winning culture is like. And losing to the not-trying Raiders and losing yet again, at home, to the Dallas Cowboys, is not building that winning culture.”
There’s a reason that this debate is so impassioned. Both sides have a reasonable argument. A higher draft pick does help you win in the future, but so does building a “winning culture” like Jones suggests.
What makes this situation unique is it seems the Giants always find themselves here, with the ability to lock up a top draft pick, only to end up winning a meaningless game towards the end of the season. It’s understandable that fans would be frustrated after seeing this same script before.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.