Bill Belichick never had to be concerned about tanking with the Patriots, and he’d like to see the NFL make a simple rule change to ensure fewer teams are tempted to do so.
How the NFL determines its draft order has become a hot topic after the Giants’ win over the Colts on Sunday contributed to them falling all the way from the No. 1 spot to fourth — and out of a clear path to pick quarterback Shedeur Sanders, quarterback Cam Ward and two-way star Travis Hunter in the 2025 NFL Draft.
Even as Belichick’s former team holds the No. 1 selection, the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach believes in a draft lottery system instead of determining the order by record and the strength of schedule for the tiebreaker as it is now.
“I was never involved in [tanking] but I don’t know what happens somewhere else,” Belichick said during his weekly appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Monday. “It’s different than the NBA. The NBA kind of rectified that by having a lottery. So even if you’re the worst team, you’re not guaranteed the first pick. In the NFL, that’s not quite the case. If you are the worst team, you do get the first pick.”
The freshly minted North Carolina football coach believes it wouldn’t be a “bad idea for the competitiveness of the sport” to adopt a lottery system like the NBA in the NFL.
“Then we wouldn’t be having this conversation — well we might be having it, but there’d be other circumstances besides just your record,” Belichick said “There’d be actually a lottery part of it. But that’s not a decision for me to make, that’s just a suggestion.”
The Giants’ win Sunday shook up the draft order with the Patriots now first, the Titans second and the Browns third with all four teams at 3-13.
Big Blue could drop even further down if they beat the Eagles on Sunday, exactly what Belichick is looking to take off the table with a draft lottery.
