The Las Vegas Raiders and New York Giants squared off in Week 17 with the loser likely to secure the No. 1 pick in the 2026 National Football League Draft.
The Giants walloped the Raiders 34-10 and there is speculation that the Raiders weren’t playing their hardest. Some believe that Las Vegas “tanked” or lost the game on purpose in order to try and secure the first pick.
Because the NFL doesn’t have a draft lottery in place, teams pick based on their record. With the Raiders appearing to show little effort in a blowout loss and the situation with star edge rusher Maxx Crosby, could the NFL adopt the draft lottery? ESPN’s Dan Graziano believes that could be a possibility.
“The Giants and the Raiders met Sunday in a 'battle' of 2-13 teams with major implications for the top pick in the 2026 draft,” Graziano wrote Sunday. “The Raiders' approach to this game raised a lot of eyebrows around the league and brought to the surface an old debate about tanking and teams not trying their hardest to win late-season games if losing can improve their draft position.”
The team put several starters on injured reserve ahead of this game, including Crosby. There’s a lot of controversy here, as Crosby wanted to play. The Raiders wanted to shut him down because of a knee injury, but Crosby believed he was healthy enough to suit up. He was so upset by the decision that he stormed out of the team’s facility and posted videos of him playing basketball with his daughter at his home.
“The Raiders can say all they want about how Crosby might need knee surgery after the season. Every year, dozens of NFL players finish out their seasons, then have offseason surgery,” Graziano added. “Pretty much every player is banged up at this point of the season, and if a team wants to tell you the guy has an injury that keeps him from being able to play, it's pretty tough to prove it wrong. But again, the way the Raiders have handled the past week has a lot of people around the league talking.
“The Raiders were absolutely atrocious in Sunday's 34-10 loss. They did not look like a team trying its hardest to win. The NFL absolutely does not want there to be a perception about its teams throwing in the towel on games that count in the standings. So if other teams raise enough of a stink about what the Raiders are doing, it's entirely possible that anti-tanking measures will come up for discussion at the offseason owners' meetings.”
The Raiders and their staff will say they were playing to win, but anyone who watched this game could see it wasn’t their best effort even without some key players.
The other three major U.S. sports (baseball, hockey, basketball) all have a draft lottery in place to reduce the odds of teams tanking, and with how this situation has played out, don’t be surprised if the NFL adopts this strategy to prevent this in the future.