Tanking for Trevor: This week's NFL Powerless Rankings
Jets’ Joe Flacco, Jag’s Gardner Minshew, Washington’s Kyle Allen, Atlanta’s Matt Ryan and Giants’ Daniel Jones. credits: | source: Getty Images Deadspin is proud to introduce its weekly #TankforTrevor Powerless Rankings, where we examine the sorriest teams in the league who have the best chance of selecting Clemson star quarterback Trevor Lawrence in the 2021 NFL draft.
5. Atlanta Falcons
Yes, even though Atlanta got their first win Sunday vs. the imposters otherwise known as Kirk Cousins and the Minnesota Vikings, they still have a great opportunity to tank for Lawrence and then trade former No. 1 pick Matt Ryan for assets to rebuild their organization. The Parakeets’ performance in Minnesota had less to do with the team fixing its ills and more to do with the Vikings’ pass defense disappearing faster than Nick Saban’s COVID diagnosis.
4. New York Giants
The Giants come in toward the bottom of these power rankings simply because I think they are high on Daniel Jones. Why would they be high on the watered-down version of Eli Manning? I don’t know. But we realize by now that the Giants make decisions in spite of common sense, not because of it. The G-Men got their first win only because Washington is a mess, but they could play their way out of the Lawrence sweepstakes if Jones can prove that he doesn’t have the same gameday swag as a dude who wears khaki slacks to the club.
3. Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jags are holding this spot cause anytime you let the Matt Patricia-led Lions smack you by almost twenty points, you are automatically getting Top 3 “Tank for Trevor” consideration. Jacksonville is now 1-5 to start the season and has gotten beat by more than 15 points three times in the last four weeks. The Gardner Minshew experiment is more out of style than the Billy Ray Cyrus mullet the quarterback tried to rock last year.
2. Washington Football Team
The Washington Football Team has no clear direction on where they want to go on offense. They benched their former first-round pick, Dwayne Haskins, in favor of a guy with two first names who looks like your local used car salesman behind center. Today that guy led the Washington football team to last place in a division that’s more terrible than Chance the Rapper’s last album.
1. New York Jets
There’s really no other option here for the top spot. The Paper Airplanes are the only winless team remaining in the league, and have a head coach who is as clueless as Trump on foreign policy. It’s clear that Adam Gase has the football I.Q. of Patrick Star and somehow looks like he’s cross-faded every time he steps on the field. If I’m Lawrence, it’s going to take $100 million guaranteed for me to join that dumpster fire masquerading as a professional franchise.