Week 17 of the NFL regular season: Makin’ it right

The NFL has a problem. The last two weeks of its regular season are often rather … lacking. Too many teams don’t care about winning. When your season only has 17 weeks, and one or two of them are almost unwatchable, well, that’s a problem.

This is not another debate about What The Colts Did. It’s not about whether or not they should have gone for the undefeated season. I understand why they rested players. Everyone understands the reasoning. This is about giving the Colts, and other teams in the same situation, a reason to want to win the last game of the season. And for that matter, it’s also about giving 2-13 teams a reason to win.

I realize I’m a little late to this party, considering the playoffs have started, and everyone’s forgotten about this by now, but hear me out. There’s been some discussion about this. Roger Goodell alluded to doing something with draft picks. The Commish basically said, and I’m paraphrasing, that teams need to be rewarded for trying to win, but they can’t be punished for not trying to win.

My idea may not be a complete solution to the problem, but it certainly won’t hurt matters. It’s not drastic, either. No draft pick rewards, no sanctions or penalties. Nothing like that.

Week 17 should be “NFL Rivalry Week.” Every team should play a divisional game in the final week of the season. It could rotate between teams each season. That’s it. That’s the whole idea.

Now, although the Texans might not care to beat the Jaguars when neither team has a reason to win, this won’t be true for all teams. Send New England to Miami in Week 17. Bring Dallas to DC. Let the Steelers battle the Ravens or the Browns. Some teams, perhaps most of them, are too proud to lose divisional games. This happened in 2003, when Baltimore beat Pittsburgh in a hard-fought overtime game, 13-10. The Ravens had already sewn up the division. Their seed was set. Yet, they played their starters, and won.

(Sure, maybe that grueling win took too much out of the Ravens, and it might have been a factor in their playoff loss against Tennessee the next week. But that’s not the point here. The Ravens tried to win. That’s the point.)

This would also give us another ready-made argument: “Team A doesn’t want to beat their divisional foe? Have they no pride? How can they expect to win in the playoffs? Where’s the killer instinct?” (Not like we need any more of those discussions.)

So there we are. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s an improvement. I’m not sure a perfect solution exists in this case.