I guess there's some confusion because I quoted ZADO's post, which included the word 'tanking'.
Again, there's a big difference between "tanking" and "packing it in", "playing out the string", whatever cliche one wants to use.
Years ago, for a period of about 6 Seasons (Zorn, Shanahan and a little bit of Gruden), I was pretty close with some folks on the Redskins: Coaches, Players, Management. I spent time with them socially, did a lot of listening to conversations happening around me, and heard a lot of off the record stuff, from almost everyone, including some of the best Players of their era. There were some pretty bad seasons mixed in there, with some average-to-good ones, but outside of 2012, never a Season of note (by 2015, Jay's second Season where they finished 1st in NFC east and went to the Playoffs, all of my connections were no longer with the organization). Believe what you will, but what I learned was, when the writing is on the wall, and the Season is a lost cause, plenty of guys just come to work, go through the motions and collect a paycheck, and can't wait for the Season to be over. By the time they get to the pros, start earning money, and are around long enough to understand it's a business first, and a game second, and that what they do, at the end of the day, is a job, a lot of the joy of playing the game wears off, especially if not winning, and in a losing culture. Not all of them, but certainly many, when the writing is on the wall, and the writing is bad, show up, do what they need to do to collect a paycheck, and count the days until the Season is over and start fresh the following year.