Please click on the ads for more good news :) NFL Football Teams, Scores, Stats, News, Standings, Rumors National Football League ESPN It has been 14 years since the NFL last conducted an expansion draft. In 2002, the Houston Texans came into existence with a draft that didn't go particularly well. Their first pick, Jaguars tackle Tony Boselli, never played a down for the franchise. The Texans did find a Pro Bowler in defensive tackle Gary Walker, but otherwise, it was mostly a reflection of just how difficult it can be to build a football team out of spare parts and bad contracts. The league has no immediate plans to expand, especially now that the Los Angeles market has been filled by the Rams, but it's an interesting what-if case. There's the matter of figuring out which players each organization would try to get rid of, naturally, and what that would tell us about their respective situations. On top of that, there are questions about the back of each team's roster, and how you might try to build an NFL team from scratch with limited resources. The NFL would likely try to expand with two teams, but let's run through a would-be expansion draft for one team and assume that the drafts were staggered to have the teams arrive over a two-year stretch. Let's put together an expansion roster for this new 33rd NFL franchise. I should note that cuts are coming fast and furious, so if you're reading this into the weekend, a name or two below could have been cut (by now). The Rules To fill out our new team's roster, let's follow the rules from the 2002 draft. Each existing team has to make five players from its roster available, and only one of those players can have 10 or more years of experience in the league. Typically, only one player who went on injured reserve can be placed on the list, but because the league would have made its injured reserve decisions differently in 2015 if an expansion draft was coming, we'll relax that rule. The same is true for a limit on posting pending restricted free agents, given how the rules there have changed. Punters and kickers are not allowed, and teams can't include players who are about to become free agents. Once a player is chosen from a team's list, they can elect to pull a player back, but that's not going to affect our selections as part of this draft. Our new franchise has to pick 30 players or acquire contracts equal to 38 percent of the salary cap; this year, that's about $59 million. There's a dramatic difference between how teams normally dump salaries and how they pull that off in the expansion draft. When teams cut players, whatever bonus money is left on that player's deal accelerates onto that year's cap, and they're still stuck paying guaranteed salaries. If a player is chosen in the expansion draft, though, all signing bonus proration and guaranteed money is passed onto the new team, making it a miraculous play to get out of bad contracts. Indeed, many of the players available to the Texans in 2002 were still-talented veterans under stifling deals. The Plan The fun thing about starting a team from scratch is getting to build them in your desired image, so here goes nothing: Our team is going to toss the ball around as much as anybody, even without much of a quarterback, because throwing the ball is more efficient than running. We're going to install zone-blocking concepts up front, so we're looking for athletic linemen, even if they're a bit undersized. And because more teams play in a 4-3 than a 3-4, we're going to buck the trend and go with a 3-4 front. Our draft plan is to try and find undervalued veteran talent, either because of recent injuries, cap woes, or poor scheme fits, preferably on the line of scrimmage. We'll take shots on younger players with draft pedigrees who haven't managed to find steady playing time in their current situation, hoping that a fresh start will get their career going. And as far as the relatively unknown players on the bottom of rosters, we'll look for high-upside prospects who might break out with playing time. The Picks I'll run team-by-team here, list a sample five-man expansion list, and identify the player(s) who will be making the move to our new franchise, listing their cap hits in parentheses.

• published: 05 Mar 2016
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