Remember those commercials that went, "Wouldn't you really rather have a Buick?"
Well, rather obviously, you would have rather had a Cadillac or an Oldsmobile — until General Motors abolished the latter in 2004.
Similarly, any NFL team would rather have a Manning quarterbacking their team.
If the season ended today (an expression I utterly despise — but I will make a one-column exception here), on April 23, 2026, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, taking time off from his crusade for an 18-game regular-season schedule, will say:
"With the first pick in the 2026 NFL draft, the New York Jets select ... Arch Manning, quarterback, Texas."
Already off to an 0-5 start, which no team in NFL history has ever overcome to make the playoffs — the Jets can be expected to tank the rest of their season so that they can draft Manning, which will make them at least playoff contenders for the next 15 years.
This situation not only impugns the integrity of the game, but cries out for the NFL to implement a draft lottery to prevent this from ever happening again.
In addition, it also calls for the NFL to change the tie-breaking procedures for determining draft choices.
On November 9, the winless Jets host the 1-4 Browns — and dating all the way back to 2012, Cleveland is 13-36 on artificial turf, upon which the Jets play their home games at MetLife Stadium.
Assuming the Jets win that game — not a dangerous assumption under the circumstances — and the Jets and the Browns finish with the same record, shouldn't Cleveland draft ahead of the Jets? And what if three or more teams tie for the league's worst record? Shouldn't head-to-head results decide that, as well, providing every team involved in the tie had at least one opportunity to have played one or more of the others — which is how ties for wild card playoff berths would have been decided from 1970 through 1977? It never actually happened.
Instead, strength of schedule would break the tie — thus doubly penalizing the team that played the tougher schedule by knocking them down in the draft order.
With any luck, the Jets will go out of their way to tank games the rest of this season — causing such a public outcry that the owners will have no choice but to implement a lottery for 2027 and beyond (the league cannot change horses in mid-stream by going to a lottery for the 2026 draft).
Not to do so would tarnish the NFL and its iconic shield.
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