I don't know if Belichick has the stomach to tank. Winning is so ingrained up there. It would take super overt efforts to sabotage and full-on tank. (Even the Dolphins couldn't do their tanking without making it hilariously obvious with those roster moves, and they were lousy to begin with and didn't need to do much heavy lifting to tank -- and they still accidentally wound up with a roster too good to earn the #1 pick despite themselves.)
But maybe I'm just saying that to talk myself out of worrying about it because it will annoy me so much if they get Lawrence without even having to pay an RGIII-level trade price to go get him.
I guess Belichick doing something cold and calculating to set them up for a new era isn't that unthinkable. But, man, I hope not. On a personal level, it'll take all the fun out of seeing them lose in 2020 if it becomes clear they're actually doing it on purpose and knowing they'll immediately stop losing the second they have what they want and choose to win again. Oh boy.
The NFL recipe is to pile up 1st round picks.
Really hard to tank in football with 22 starters. Can't ever ask players not play hard and any one single player has limited control--though the QB can affect one side of the ball a great deal, that's still a fraction of a fraction
I mean, sure. But if the team makes up their mind to tank, they can do it without the coaches or players being in on it. It's not like a basketball team intentionally playing worse because the point-guard is in on some kind of points-shaving scheme or some effort to throw a game for gambling money. The front office dictates how good the roster is in the first place, even if the remaining roster and coaches all try their hardest.
Miami's tank kinda didn't work (they made themselves bad and guaranteed themselves a high pick, but fell short of the top pick) because they weren't smart enough with their use of the scalpel.
If you tank your roster at the QB position, the kicker positon and the long-snapper position (as insurance against the kicker but also to tank your punting and therefore field-position game, which hurts your offense and defense both), you can accomplish a much better tanking without even having to trade away some guys who are young enough to be useful players or core players when you get your QB and the rebuild pays off.
The Dolphins made the mistake of giving the coach a viable QB option to choose from. If you replace Ryan Fitzpatrick on that roster with, say, a Christian Hackenberg, the team starts Josh Rosen all year and picks #1.
