The NFL Should Let Delusional Teams Trade As Many Draft Picks As They Want

It is delusion, not money, not clout, not entertainment value, that is the actual driving force behind the success of the NFL as a product. The delusion of hope. The delusion of, say, winning a parlay from the funds you sourced via a child’s first communion envelope. The delusion that the first-round pick’s jersey you just purchased on NFL Shop for $175 will not be simply ironic streetwear for hipsters in a matter of three years. It literally powers a billion-dollar business.

But there is also the delusion associated with hubris, which convinces these franchises that they are the purveyors of some mystical culture or algorithm and not, simply, a bunch of adrift businesses randomly slamming their ships into generationally talented players once every two decades and crafting a narrative around that dumb luck compelling enough to sell T-shirts (Do Your Job … and Buy One!).

And it’s with this in mind that I implore the NFL to please, please pass the Browns’ rule proposal that would allow a team to sink up to a half decade’s worth of draft picks in one fell swoop. This can take delusion, coat it in gasoline and dump it alongside a lit cigarette onto a smoldering plane of dried out leaves. Delusion can be totally life ruining. It can lead to the destruction of businesses, relationships, or, believe it or not, empires. However, it can also be tremendously fun to witness when the stakes—the success or failure of a professional sports franchise—are low on the casualty scale and the only person truly embarrassed owns a private equity firm.

From the franchise that brought you the Deshaun Watson trade, seriously, comes an ask to be able to deal (or acquire) picks up to five years in the future. While I imagine this has some kind of flashy high-minded underpinning that the team’s brain trust will explain like one of those condescending interludes in The Big Short, I would like to believe the reason is that Cleveland would possibly, one day, want to wipe out enough first-round picks with the click of a button to outlast an entire presidential term and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I would like to imagine a franchise (not just the Browns, to be clear) not just being the-jersey-with-a-lot-of-quarterbacks bad, but bad enough to consider shuttering the thing in the dead of night like a diner that owes thousands in back taxes. Real pain. Scary pain.

Again, a franchise can “fail” in the NFL only relatively because of all the bowling lane bumpers in place, which is a problem for me because it doesn’t accentuate the boundless creativity teams can conjure when it comes to making terrible decisions. Many NFL teams deserve to be way worse than they actually are. The passage of this proposal would allow that failure to become something closer to catastrophic. The NBA has a rule in place—the Stepien Rule—to prevent this from happening again because the former owner of the Cavaliers was so irresponsible that moves had to be approved by an NBA third party. How Rock and Roll is that? Even still, many NBA franchises, who are allowed to deal nonconsective first-round picks up to seven years in advance (but get around this restriction by utilizing mechanisms like pick swaps) are armed with the ability to cannon blast a generation’s worth of talented draft picks into the sun for a cheap shot at a fast turnaround. The Nets did it twice in the past quarter century. The Clippers traded a dynasty to the Thunder for an age-32 and -33 Paul George. The Bucks surrendered their future through 2030 for a player, who, after three seasons, just went back to the team from which he came in the first place.

That’s the kind of messy I want. Unwatchable, unfathomable grossness. Country song depressing (1940s country, not every-song-is-about-Corona-on-the-beach country).

Here’s what we don’t talk about nearly enough: Almost all NFL decisions are political decisions. Players who start are our guys. Players who sit are their guys. General managers and coaches fearing the loss of a job will sweet-talk an owner like a concierge at the Four Seasons. And they will spend future capital knowing that, if it doesn't work out, they won’t be around to bear the brunt of it. At best, they milked another year out of the irreparably broken system.

Dave Gettleman trading back with the Bears in the Justin Fields deal is literally the only time I remember an embattled general manager acquiring future picks while fairly certain he wouldn’t be there to spend them. More often than not, we have what is happening with the Colts. Two first-round picks for Sauce Gardner? Another $60 million guaranteed for Daniel Jones? Right, right, whatever, let’s just do it.

Imagine it getting so much worse. Imagine the Colts chasing the high of half a 2025 season by giving up their 2028 first-rounder as well. And 2029. Imagine the governor of Indiana having to make a statement about the franchise in disarray, or a stadium filled with just a small colony of drifters who live in the corridors at night.

Delusion powers the mind past guardrails and common sense. It powers teams into thinking that with these draft picks they can remake a roster they were incapable of fixing last time. It powers teams to think that, If I only had this one guy everything would be better. It’s a fallacy, but an important one when it comes to entertaining me. No owner, general manager or coach ever thinks about the catastrophe, which is what makes its slow-arriving horror show reveal all the better.

Of course, the beauty of the NFL is that, amid the calamity, the fans will remain—another reason why there should be no fear in passing this rule. The disaster will simply become part of watching, of being. Whether fans will admit it now, being a bemoaned supporter of a bad franchise is like playing a theatrically beloved role that, after years, is simply part of their milieu. They’re noticed for it. They enjoy putting on the colors and dancing the performative waltz of failure while filming themselves on cell phones (in reality, alone in the dark, wearing some borrowed dress). It’s a personality trait. It’s engagement bait. And, thanks to this rule proposal, it can be bigger and better and wholly dumber than ever before. It’s all part of the delusion.

We live in a wildly stupid, beautiful and magnanimous point in world history and it’s time the NFL has caught up.

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