NFL Draft: Which 2-12 Team Needs the No. 1 Pick Most?
By Will Osgood
Which bottom-feeding NFL team needs the No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft the most?
When Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday night, it was the culmination of a season in which Mariota really went wire-to-wire as the presumptive best player in college football.
Sure there were moments throughout this super wacky college football season when another player challenged that crown—some of whom figure to be candidates for a top-five pick in the upcoming NFL Draft.
Amari Cooper, most notably, stole the spotlight early in the year with a ridiculous first few games. He was on pace to break NCAA single season receiving records—something that doesn’t happen at Alabama or in a “Power 5” conference.
In the end, Cooper had to settle for a slightly less amazing statistical season, but still produced an array of dazzling highlight reel catches and performances. If the right team (for him) were picking at No. 1 and was unable to trade out of the slot, Cooper could actually get selected ahead of Mariota.
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That seems unlikely though. As we head into Week 16 of the NFL season, the four teams with the most viable shot to receive the No. 1 pick are all really bad. And a team who seemed to kind of blow their chance on Sunday, the New York Jets, are equally terrible.
It should be noted that, as was the case in the Jets-Titans matchup on Sunday, two of the teams still vying for the No. 1 pick, are playing in our always venerable Thursday night game. It’s the Titans again, who are this time traveling to Jacksonville to take on Gus Bradley’s Jaguars.
Both teams enter the game at 2-12. And barring a tie, one team will move to 13 losses and remain in the lottery for that No. 1 pick. But the question is, which one needs it more? And do any of the other 12 loss teams need it more?
We won’t go through the scenarios much here. Just know that it would take A LOT for the J-E-T-S Jets, Jets, Jets to work themselves back into the No. 1 pick. Perhaps the win on Sunday was Rex Ryan’s going away middle finger to what promises to soon be a former employer.
While the Jets may not have been the most desperate for the No. 1 pick, they probably were the team who could have gained the most from it.
That’s because in reality, as currently concocted, the Jets are the one team who could make a huge jump from their current sad state of affairs if only they hit on a franchise quarterback, which of course most analysts are currently projecting Marcus Mariota to become.
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Ryan’s defenses feast on bad offenses and generally present themselves well against the upper-echelon offensive units in the league. For instance, this season the Jets held the Packers to their second worst scoring output at Lambeau Field.
They held New England to 27 points earlier in the year, 31 for Denver—which is no small feat—and the Steelers to 13 points at a time when Ben Roethlisberger was coming off consecutive outings with six touchdown passes in each game.
Simply put, if the Jets had even a lick of offensive firepower, Rex Ryan probably wouldn’t be scouting out the best defensive coordinator opportunities in 2015, or pining for a big-time TV job. But again, unless a very improbable chain of events takes place in the next two weeks, the Jets will be on the outside looking in for that No. 1 pick.
It seems fair to pit the four 12-loss teams against one another for the sake of figuring out which one most needs the No. 1 pick—and the likely right to draft Marcus Mariota.
Each team’s odds for gaining the No. 1 overall pick are in parentheses, as identified by Numberfire.com.
Next: Jacksonville Jaguars