We’ve just entered Week 8 of the NFL season, but — since that’s nearly halfway through the regular season — some teams are already pretty much cooked.
There are four teams with just one win: the New England Patriots, Cleveland Browns, Tennessee Titans, and Carolina Panthers. If you’re a fan of any of those teams, for instance, your 2024 season is pretty much done, barring a huge miracle. And if you root for one of the seven two-win teams — the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, Las Vegas Raiders, Jacksonville Jaguars, New York Giants, L.A. Rams, and New Orleans Saints — then you probably need a slightly smaller miracle. As the saying goes, there’s always next year.
As a matter of fact, it might be time to start thinking about next year. Pushing off your hopes to the next season is a tale as old as time. As a fan of the Philadelphia 76ers — perhaps the sports franchise most associated with tanking — I empathize with fans of bad NFL teams who have already turned their attention to the 2025 NFL Draft.
We’ve taken the time to collect some of the best online resources for fans of teams that stink to help you better prepare for next year’s draft. After all, hope springs eternal.
Tankathon
The NFL has relatively simple draft rules compared with the NBA’s arcane lottery system. But Tankathon remains an indispensable resource for teams that suck. It’s a website that tracks where each team would stand in the next year’s draft, according to the results thus far in the season.
Here’s how the 2025 draft would look right now, for instance.
Credit: Tankathon
Scroll down a bit, and you can also find Tankathon’s Mock Draft for 2025, which is far too early to take seriously but still fun to look at.
Credit: Tankathon
If your NFL team is trash, think of Tankathon as a hub of hope. It’s where you go to remind yourself that at least a good draft pick is coming. It’s a place where you get to think of the potentially good players of the future rather than the bad ones of the present.
The Ringer’s NFL draft coverage
I’m a big fan of The Ringer’s NFL coverage, especially their podcast — hosted by Danny Kelly, Danny Heifetz, and Craig Horlbeck — that oscillates between covering the draft and fantasy football, depending on the time of year. Right now, the pod is centered on fantasy football, but it will switch over as the draft nears. However, the outlet still provides in-depth coverage of the college games and the draft, which you can find on its NFL Draft landing page. The site also has perhaps the best and most intuitive draft guide around. The 2025 version hasn’t been released yet, but it always features incredibly in-depth scouting reports, digestible summaries, and an easy-to-navigate design.
Draft experts
Now’s the time to start beefing up on the college players your team might draft. There’s a whole cottage industry based around prognosticating players’ transition from college to the pros.
Here’s a quick list, with links, to some of the NFL draft folks I’ve read, listened to, or otherwise appreciated over the years. Note that some of these people also cover the NFL at large, so you may get varying content.
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Todd McShay, the former ESPN stalwart, just launched a podcast on The Ringer.
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Dane Brugler, NFL draft analyst at The Athletic, puts out a yearly comprehensive guide dubbed The Beast.
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Lance Zierlein does NFL draft coverage for the league’s media outlet.
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Ben Solak, who covers the NFL as a whole for ESPN, does a great job with the draft and breaking down how the game works for the average fan.
Mock drafts
As previously noted, Tankathon has a constantly updated mock draft, but it’s far from alone. If your team is awful, it’s fun to constantly check in on who you might take in the draft, according to different outlets. Even this early in the season, you can find mocks on CBS, Fox Sports, and ESPN. And you can keep Googling throughout the year because many outlets update their mock drafts weekly.
YouTube highlights
Granted, this one’s a bit kooky, but if your team is crap, then YouTube highlights might be just the thing you need. Hear me out: Instead of lamenting over your bad team, watch old clips from when they were good. Sure, the Patriots are godawful now, but you can watch 30 minutes of every single touchdown pass Tom Brady threw to Rob Gronkowski. Yes, the Titans are hapless at the moment, but you can still watch clips of Derrick Henry running over people while wearing a Tennessee uniform.
Your football present might stink, but at least you have the future draft prognostications and past triumphs to tide you over until next season.
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