2012 NFL Draft: Are Dolphins Trying to "Suck for Luck"?

Following the shoulder injury to quarterback Chad Henne that will sideline him for the remainder of the season, the Miami Dolphins have signed Sage Rosenfels rather than David Garrard to replace Henne on the roster.

Is this an attempt on Miami's part to secure the top pick in the 2012 NFL draft—putatively, Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck?

Clearly, Garrard would have won more games for the Dolphins in 2011 than Rosenfels will.

This move will no doubt lead to calls for the NFL to adopt some sort of lottery system to determine which team makes the top selection in future drafts, as the NBA has done—and very successfully, not only from a competitive standpoint, but from a public-relations standpoint as well—since 1985.

Or, at the absolute least, this could be done: In years when the AFC team wins the Super Bowl, the team that finished with the worst record in the NFC gets the top pick, and in years when the NFC team wins the Super Bowl, the team that finished with the worst record in the AFC gets the top pick.  If two or more teams in the relevant conference tie for the worst record, the same tie-breaking procedures that are used to determine wild cards and playoff seeding—head-to-head, conference record, etc.—would come into play.

This is an improvement over the procedure the NBA observed prior to 1985—when a coin flip was held between the worst teams in the Eastern and Western Conferences (Eastern and Western Divisions prior to 1971) to identify the team that drafted first—in that it would help promote competitive balance between the AFC and the NFC, so that one conference is less likely to become vastly superior to the other for years on end.

In recent years, the AFC's superiority has been a problem, resulting in a 7-9 NFC team making the playoffs last season (Seattle) while an 11-5 AFC team missed the postseason in 2008 (New England).

If teams won't do the right thing, the league needs to give them a little nudge to make sure they do.