Combining all of the parts of this series into one big note, here the guys undertake looking at what a new NFL expansion could possibly look like, modeling after the way that the NHL handled their recent expansion addition of the Vegas Golden Knights.
The poster child for bad franchises in recent years has been the Cleveland Browns. If you went to their Pro-Football-Reference page, however, you may not know that the Browns as we know them now are (technically) an expansion team after the original team was moved to Baltimore in the middle of the night and rebranded as the Ravens. One of the main factors contributing the the Browns initial struggles (which personally, we believe has spread to the team's woes today) is the way in which their expansion draft was handled. The same can be said of the Texans, though their more recent success suggests that they may well finally be free of those shackles. So, in order to see what a new team could possibly accomplish if the expansion draft was handled a bit better in order to favor the incoming team, we reworked it completely, drafted the talent, and put together a team consisting of players currently in the NFL, and looked at where they would be talent-wise.
Expansion has been part of every sports league in the US for decades now, and it would be easy to assume that it will continue as league grow in popularity and revenue. Could this be the way that the NFL handles this going forward?