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. To fill out our new team's roster, let's follow the rules from the 2002 draft. 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).

Let's put together an expansion roster for this new 33rd NFL franchise. The NFL probably would 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Their first pick, Jaguars tackle Tony Boselli, never played a down for the franchise. In 2002, the Houston Texans came into existence with a draft that didn't go particularly well. It has been 14 years since the NFL last conducted an expansion draft.

Create your own nfl player