It's always amusing when someone asks a professional sports coach whether they think the idea of losing games on purpose just to get a higher draft pick is worth doing. Brian Mitchell knew exactly what he was doing when he posed this premise to Mike Shanahan in CSN Washington's "Shanahan Exclusive" weekly segment, and he didn't exactly hide his own point of view when putting it out there.
Shanahan's response was exactly what you'd expect. Video below the jump:
Here's the exchange in text form:
Mitchell: This whole dilemma has been going on here. Last week, you won. I'm happy. [But] then I went on Twitter, and a lot of people were upset. They were saying we should lose to get a better draft position. I have my comments. I think it's dumb. I think it's the stupidest thing in the world to say you should try to lose or try to get a higher draft pick. As a coach, what is your mindset about something like that. You're getting your team prepared, I'm sure you don't think of it. But then again, for people that think you would try to do something like that, what would you say to them?
Shanahan: Well, (pauses) you know the mindset. You don't even think about draft choices at all. I think you know this year, everybody's talking about [Andrew] Luck, so you know that goes on. The next-best player, there's always different types of opinion. The one thing you don't ever think about as a football coach is anything but winning. You would like to pick 32nd every year, or 31st. They're always going to be good players there. So for people to start thinking about the draft and those picks, I just laugh at the idea that we'd ever be thinking in those terms.