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The *GASP* Tank: Does It Work?

With the Watkins and Darby trades came talk of *shuddering commences* DUN DUN DUN...THE TANK!

The Premise

For the record; I have, um, gone on the record a bunch of times indicating that the Buffalo Bills aren't tanking. But, part of the discussion Rumblers have been having is pretty interesting. Specifically, does tanking actually WORK? Coincidentally, Jon Bois (beloved SB Nation writer of Breaking Madden fame) recently released the latest in his "Chart Party" series. In this edition, he looked at volatility in teams' records for the last 30 years and made a handy chart for each team. The link is below, and I encourage everyone to read it and get to know the joy that is the work of Jon Bois.

https://www.sbnation.com/2017/8/22/16181334/chart-party-history-of-nfl

The reason this is so fortuitous for our discussion is that it becomes very easy to see where teams bottom out. Which brings me to my methodology for this article.

For my purposes, I feel it is irrelevant to the discussion of "can a tank work" to worry about whether a team bottoming out was intentional. In essence, what we really want to know is "can a team be reeeeeeal ****ty and bounce right back?"

Now this was a casual project, and I might have missed a thing or two while scanning, but here's what I did:

  • Look for team records that were 3-13 or below. This is admittedly a bit arbitrary but then again...so's your old man. Deal with it
  • Did the team have a winning record in the next 3 years, with evidence of improvement along the way
  • If "no" then bottoming out was considered a "failure"
  • If "yes" they then fell into two buckets. If they sucked then got good but it wasn't sustained or they hovered around mediocre (8-8 season) then it's a "wash." The bottoming out didn't exactly hurt, but it was not a successful method to success
  • Only teams that bounced back and had evidence of sustained success (winning seasons) were considered as a "success" for bottoming out
  • I cut the data off with the 2013 season, as teams that crapped out in 2014 can't have demonstrated a true pattern yet
With that out of the way, get prepared for lists and data!

The Data

Teams that had a 3-13 season or worse and continued sucking

  • '92 Seahawks, '06 Raiders, '01 Bills (sigh), '00 Cardinals, '99 Browns, '96 Saints, '99 Saints (ouch), '12 Jags, '14 Jags, '90 Pats, '92 Pats (the Glory Years), '91 Bucs, '91 Bengals, '93 Bengals, '94 Bengals, '98 Bengals (poor little guys just kept bottoming out with no luck), '05 Texans, '13 Texans, '03 49ers, '91 Colts, '91 Rams (lotta crap teams in '91), '07 Rams, '09 Rams, '08 Chiefs, '12 Chiefs, '01 Lions, '02 Lions, '06 Lions, '08 Lions, '09...you guessed it...Lions, '87 Falcons
  • That's 31 instances in the last 30 years in which teams had a season where they crapped the bed and it didn't turn into a winning team. About once a year, a team is gonna suck hard and have nothing to show for it the next few years

Teams that had a 3-13 season or worse and it didn't help or hurt them long term

  • '94 Washington, '11 Vikings, '02 Bengals, '00 Chargers, '96 Jets, '89 Falcons, '96 Falcons, '01 Panthers, '10 Panthers, '07 Dolphins
  • So here we have 10 teams that had a dismal year, and it was followed by mediocrity. Some of these teams have had winning seasons (Chargers and Panthers stand out...Panthers for sure). However, their winning seasons are inconsistent. As Jon Bois noted, the Panthers' seasons are so inconsistent they've become almost predictable

Teams that had a 3-13 season or worse and bounced back to winning ways (aka "what we're here for")

  • '98 Eagles, '05 Saints, '94 Oilers, '89 Cowboys, '11 Colts, '98 Colts
  • We have 6 teams here where the bottom fell out but they came back in a strong way.

Crunching the numbers and a few thoughts

This means that a team bottoming out has a:
  • 66% chance of continuing to be pretty bad to downright awful
  • 21% chance of it having no long term consequence
  • 13% chance of a success story
Or put another way, for roughly every eight teams that become a "Lord of the Basement," one of these teams will come back as a winner. That's actually much better odds than I expected. And when it comes to gambling your future, one in three teams that really suck will bounce back just enough to avoid being a long term laughingstock. And if we take out the Lions who seem completely unable to learn from mistakes; the odds are even better.

There's no statistical valid reason to take out the Lions I'm aware of. It's just...FIVE seasons of 3-13 (or worse, much worse) in a single decade? How's that even work?

But, can a TANK work?

From the above, it's pretty clear that a team bottoming out can build off that sucktitude and make something nice out of it. The Eagles and McNabb did OK. Same with the Saints who seem to intentionally put Drew Brees into impossible situations where he needs to bend time and space to throw for 42,000 yards. The Oilers and recent version of the Colts have had some success. The '98 Colts turned into a yearly contender with two SB apperances and one win. The '89 Cowboys...well let's not discuss what they went on to do, but they're a clear success story.

But did any of these teams "tank" to get there? While I don't think intent is necessarily a huge deal, let's examine what these teams did. While I will weigh in on whether I think it was a tank, as we so often heard in another era during commercial breaks:


98 Eagles: New coach and system, but no evidence of jettisoning players. Not a ton of easy data but likely not a tank. However, new regime and uninspiring QB carousel (3 wins, each by a different QB) is a lot LIKE a tank. Next year picked McNabb and had a good run. TANK SIMULATION

'05 Saints: Katrina year likely had something to do with this. New coach and QB the following year turned things around. Brees signed as a FA so doesn't seem to fit the "tank" philosophy. NOT A TANK

'94 Oilers: Weirdest case here. The Oilers were coming off a 12-4 season, but lunatic owner Bud Adams threatened to blow up the team if they didn't win the SB. They didn't. He did. He got rid of Warren Moon and Buddy Ryan (DC) and the state of the team was so bad the HC quit before the season ended. TANK

'89 Cowboys: Now technically, I should have added the '88 Cowboys to the "success list" as they went 3-13 that year and were winning within 3 years of sucking. However, they sucked for 2 and came back strong. '88 allowed them to draft Aikman and add a good many pieces. There's no evidence of trying to suck on purpose. But, in '89 they got themselves a new HC and a new owner, so 88 was kind of a lame duck year for the incumbents. Let's call this TANK SIMULATION

'98 Colts: Another case where they had two bad years, and were winning within three years of the first bad season. '97 doesn't show much in the way of tank signs. '98 does though. New HC. New GM. Got rid of Marshall Faulk. Maybe a tank, at least TANK SIMULATION

'11 Colts: Manning's neck became a major issue and there's no convincing me that Irsay didn't elect to take advantage of this and "Suck for Luck." Trotting out Kerry Collin's desiccated remains taped to a Roomba was their "Plan A" at QB. Curtis Painter was "Plan B." TANK

Conclusion

I am not willing to look at the 37 seasons where bottoming out either "sorta" worked or failed to evaluate whether those were intentional tanks. I've answered all the questions I needed to, to satisfy my personal curiosity.

That said, there are two pretty clear cases (to me at least) where a team intentionally blew it up and said "to hell with the consequences, I'm going for it." In BOTH of those cases, it worked out pretty well for the teams involved. Neither the Oilers/Titans or recent Colts have become juggernauts, but they turned into respectable teams that it wasn't hard to see making some noise. If there's any "suck to win" blueprint, I'd say it's the one the Cowboys and '90s Colts did. Suck for two years, then get rolling.

More importantly, there are decent returns on being terrible. More often than not it's not a quick turnaround. So tanking or bottoming out is by no means a SAFE strategy. I say "decent" returns, because a 1 in 8 chance of a turnaround is a better return than whatever the hell we've been doing for 17+ years.

Obviously there have been some damn good teams that didn't come from a tank job.

So the ultimate conclusion is this. A tank can fail. A tank can work. Adding onto a foundation can fail (us). Adding onto a foundation can work (Patriots).

Winning takes many forms and seems to boil down to having the right team in place. So let's end on some hope:

  • Option A: You feel the Bills are a solid team that needs a few pieces (optimists). GOOD NEWS! That's one way to build a winning team
  • Option B: You think the Bills are a mediocre team. GOOD NEWS! You can build a winning team off of this too!
  • Option C: You think the Bills are a terrible team and we're in for a rough season. GOOD NEWS! This can work out too!

For the hell of it, let me know which one you are in the poll below...

Just another great fan opinion shared on the pages of BuffaloRumblings.com.