So here it is. My personal series on the upcoming expansion draft. The thing at least 4 of you have been waiting for. And Jesu Tapdancing Christo it took a long time and things kept changing. I should not have done it this way. That said, there’s a point where you’ve gone too far and have to just plow through. That was like...Tuesday. And now it’s Sunday. So. Maybe I misjudged that one. But, we are here now and so we press forward to the final moment. IN this series I’m going to make use of the expansion protection lists, the team rosters, updated TPE counts (done today because it took so long to write that they changed grumble grumble), and my best guesses as to who would be protected. I also took some time to analyze the situation each team is currently in and where they sit after the expansion draft concludes. Now, I was working with a budget sheet that I was informed was somewhat inaccurate and not updated, so it's possible I miss the occasional free agent to be or retirement. These things happen.
Presuming everything goes well, always a dangerous assumption, I’m going to tend to focus younger on each of the unprotected players and will mostly bend my choices in that direction because as an expansion team I tend to believe that’s the direction to go. And since they’re my articles, weeeeeeee. I’m also going to go into the draft status for each of the existing teams, with a focus on the first 4 rounds of the draft. I picked this because 4 rounds of 14 picks is 56 players, and I feel like the draft will likely peter out after that point. I’m going to try to be as in depth as I possibly can on the picks and who holds them (because I really like to dig myself deep I guess). I’m going to break this up into five separate articles rather than one ginormous monstrosity. We’re going to go over the playoff and non-playoff teams in each conference. I think that about wraps it up so let me tell you what I wish I’d known when I was young and dreamed of glory. Don’t try to write 5 articles at once featuring four kinds of research. Let’s begin with the ASFC’S top performing teams.
San Jose Sabercats
Monterey Jack QB S22 756 TPE
Phillip Stein S S23 528 TPE
Lawrence Bass LB S22 730 TPE
Deandre Thomas-Fox WR S19 818 TPE
Tychonderius Hood WR S23 601 TPE
Otis Allen DT S21 943 TPE
Mathew McDairmid K S22 750 TPE
Jamar Lackson RB S22 773 TPE
Top 5 Unprotected:
Yuuto Kira Cloudera DT S23 417 TPE
George Fisher LB S22 642 TPE
Matt Krause CB S22 639 TPE
Tyler Oles Jr CB S22 714 TPE
Leon McDavid TE S21 925 TPE
The Facts:
The Sabercats finished 9-7 and secured the first seed in the ASFC during the final week of the regular season. They do not own their own 4th round pick (New York via Baltimore) but they do own their first 3 rounds as well as Baltimore’s #4 overall. They can lose two players.
The Analysis:
Well that came out of nowhere didn’t it? San Jose started week 16 out of playoff position fighting for their life and ended it as the holder of home field advantage. Things even looked dire til the 4th quarter of that game when Nola had a 9 point lead and then bang. Benjamin Franklin with the key and the kite. San Jose gets electric and stuns the Second Line, nearly out of the playoffs entirely. Where did these Cats come from though? Should they even be here in this position? Or....like many have suggested (strongly in some cases), are they just lucky? Looking at the raw numbers I’m gonna lean towards mostly a case of being a solid team that took advantage of a good situation. They have a really solid roster led by a young QB. Honestly this team probably snuck up on a lot of people who thought it was worse than it is. Hell, they’ve even got some quality secondary pieces stashed in the DSFL that they need to find room for. So if you need an answer to why they don’t mind so much if you take some of their secondary, well now you have one. And on that note, let’s see what happens.
This one really depends on the plans of the two teams. From my perspective, you don’t get too many big active TE’s on the market like this. McDavid can be a big old safety blanket for whatever QB starts the franchise and that could be exactly what a fledgling offense needs. 60 6 yard passes are a great way to avoid an extra 30+ punts. Just saying. It had to be difficult for San Jose not to protect him to start with. And if given the chance, they will. So don’t. Make them protect Oles Jr. instead. And make your counterpart expansion team grab Krause. Which is not to say that’s not a pretty good pickup itself. Take that win to the bank. Just...in this case, McDavid is a superior player in a thinner position.
And where does this leave San Jose? Cruising. I can’t look at the roster and see any glaring current problems. I don’t know if this is really a top flight competitive roster but it’s certainly not far off. It certainly isn’t the kind of mirage that people may have thought it was. This is a legitimately solid team who’s biggest weakness as far as I can tell is that they haven’t adapted to the O-Line ERA. As questionable as the budget sheet may be right now as I write this, they still seem to have a lot of their roster locked up for a long time. There’s a mentality there that maybe didn’t exist some seasons ago, as per the Al_Gringo podcast I listened to regarding the team. They’ve got a lot of talent but no polish as of yet. But that could very well change and this team could keep surprising people the next several seasons. One request though…..if y’all somehow win the Ultimus (and I’m rooting for it at this point), Derpcat has to be on the banner somewhere.
Orange County Otters
Korrin Abernathy CB S18 1383 TPE (20% Regression incoming)
Prince Vegeta S S21 964 TPE
Suleiman Ramza QB S22 704 TPE (Senddown)
Tyrone Biggums S 1247 TPE (20% Regression incoming)
Bob Bob S S23 480 TPE
Deshun Jones LB S22 779 TPE
Future Trunks WR S21 804 TPE
Tatsu Nakamura RB S22 743 TPE
Top 5 Unprotected:
Carl Wheezer DT S23 440 TPE
Jeffrey Phillips TE S22 700 TPE
Rapid Eagle DT S21 741 TPE
Lord Beerus CB S19 996 TPE
Douglas Quail OL S21 405 TPE
The Facts:
Orange County finished 9-7 and will host New Orleans in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. They own all of their first four picks as well as Sarasota’s 3rd rounder. They can lose up to two players in the expansion draft.
The Analysis:
Oceans rise. Empires fall. OCO has been dominant through it all. Can they continue that for the next several seasons? Well, that’s a good question. I think their playoff streak (running the entire history of the league) will stay intact for at least a bit. It’s possible that a combo of teams having great seasons could change this but right now I wouldn’t bet against them, even if they may not be the odds on favorite to win it all every year. The roster is fine. Could probably stand a little trimming to be honest. Especially given that they’re going to be adding 5 picks that are likely to be viable in the upcoming draft. And even with the GOAT Franklin Armstrong retiring, they’re all set up to continue as Ramza is ready to step in with almost no bumps in the road. Which is good as they’re gonna need some new blood and reserves are a tad thin (though not completely missing). By no means is this team in trouble, they’re simply not the deepest and most prepared in the league for essentially the first time. A noteworthy event in and of itself. Sometimes when you’re used to winning, fair play feels like being attacked. So...let’s see who they’re losing.
The question here, like with so many other teams, is gonna be timing and circumstance. Whatever happens right at the beginning is going to determine how the rest of the houses of cards fall. I think Phillips and Eagle are the best choices to start with but I feel like OCO knows this too. So I guess all you can really do is jump first and take the one you want. I presume the other will be protected. Then it becomes about where the 2nd team to pick is at with the rest of their chosen roster. Do you go for the young DT for the future or the high level CB that can be top level for a couple seasons (and then decent for a few more). That is a good question that I can’t really answer even though I’m gonna write a whole ass article at the end of this where I do exactly that. I tend to think go young. But we’ll see. I don’t know the strategy that New York and Frankfurt are planning on employing so I have to guess like everyone else. For all I know a team might already have a couple big time DL players under their belt by the time it comes time to make the decision.
And of course, after the smoke clears and the dominoes fall like a house of cards OCO is gonna do who knows what in the playoffs (good fucking luck predicting the ASFC) and then those draft picks they’re holding are gonna come into play hugely. For as much as I’m analytically saying OCO isn’t in the best position, they’re still OCO. They’re still the dragon that has to be slayed. And I doubt it’s doing more than taking a quick nap until I see real evidence otherwise. And any player who gets drafted here should still be excited. They’ve basically won the ottery. Don’t look at me like that.
Arizona Outlaws
Desmond Scarlett CB S20 1047 TPE
Jay Cue QB S18 1443 TPE (20% Regression incoming)
Galf Wilf LB S20 890 TPE
Pete Miller DT S21 907 TPE
Stanislav Koniecpolski LB S22 720 TPE
Heath Evans TE S22 769 TPE
Zamir Kehla CB S22 742 TPE
DB Jadakiss S S23 558 TPE
Best 5 Unprotected:
Julio Jones OL S23 546 TPE
Joseph Petongolo RB S23 558 TPE
Claude Miller DT S22 628 TPE
Thomas Passman WR S22 714 TPE
Sandro Ryeu DE S22 711 TPE
The Facts:
Arizona finished 9-7 and will have the #8 pick in addition to the rest of their first four round picks. They can lose two picks in the expansion draft.
The Analysis:
First let’s address the obvious. The sim can suck it. Arizona came into week 16, won their game, fought their way into contention and then lost out on the playoffs by tiebreakers. Fine. It happens. And then the sim decided to display them as the 3rd finishing team in the conference while simultaneously presenting them as the 4th seed in the playoffs. That’s like stealing someone’s dog while you’re robbing their house. It’s just not cool. I’ve chosen to place them in the upper group for this series. It’s not much but it’s what I cna do. A rough ending for a team that managed to beat both Sarasota and Colorado and was full of energy after beating OCO at the start of the week. That said, their season has ended. And now they look ahead to continuing to build the future. Well….ok...in theory. In actuality they seem to have made a concentrated effort to hold onto some slightly older and much older big names. Normally this might be a headscratcher of a move. Truth be told though, there were easily 4-5 names that didn't make my list who are better than some of the people on some other teams’ lists. Arizona has a huge youth movement on its roster and the luxury of its future QB already waiting in the DSFL (and throwing me the ball). This feels like the team where expansion teams are most likely to do something entirely different than what I’m suggesting because it’s kind of wide open.
So...that said...let’s talk about who I think gets taken in the midst of Arizona’s “you can’t fucking take us all” strategy. Also known as “we’ve got reserves”. And sometimes “third joke here”. Let me make this simple. I take the OL player all day every day and twice on Sundays. Although that’s probably actually against the rules of the expansion draft if I’m being honest. Dammit Bex. Now, conventional wisdom would say you probably protect the DL players now. But in honesty, they have a full and thick DL and at least one player waiting in the wings. They probably protect the WR here and keep another target for Cue’s last couple seasons. After that, it's a matter of which expansion team pulls the trigger one which young star in the making. This is where thigns get tricky because it's insanely difficult to predict where teams will be at the point in the draft where these second choices are being made. There are so many ways it could shake out. The extended time and concentrated effort to make sure these teams can actually talk to unprotected players is a real game changing event.
Despite my reputation I don’t assume that I’m not always the smartest person in the room. And since I’m not in the room where it happens, I can’t guess what teams might do here. But I do know that when the smoke clears Arizona is going to take an impressive depth with a very solidly built team and they’re going to take another swing next season. This isn’t a team to count out based on what I’ve seen. This isn’t a S5 facade. It’s the real deal. The only bump I see in the near future is that Cue to Cortez changeover and from where I’m sitting it doesn’t look like it’s going to be as big of a bump as most other teams who are in the tedious process of transitioning.
And there you have it. Even after one of the wildest finishes I can recall where the week started with 3 teams that could have won home field advantage and 5 who could have made the playoffs, we still end with at least some normalcy, for lack of a better term. The real question for each of these teams is what the full offseason holds in terms of where they each go, as I believe each team listed here is in good position to grow forward. At least before fires, earthquakes, and whatever happens in the rest of 2020. I’m still leery about the murder hornets personally.
Presuming everything goes well, always a dangerous assumption, I’m going to tend to focus younger on each of the unprotected players and will mostly bend my choices in that direction because as an expansion team I tend to believe that’s the direction to go. And since they’re my articles, weeeeeeee. I’m also going to go into the draft status for each of the existing teams, with a focus on the first 4 rounds of the draft. I picked this because 4 rounds of 14 picks is 56 players, and I feel like the draft will likely peter out after that point. I’m going to try to be as in depth as I possibly can on the picks and who holds them (because I really like to dig myself deep I guess). I’m going to break this up into five separate articles rather than one ginormous monstrosity. We’re going to go over the playoff and non-playoff teams in each conference. I think that about wraps it up so let me tell you what I wish I’d known when I was young and dreamed of glory. Don’t try to write 5 articles at once featuring four kinds of research. Let’s begin with the ASFC’S top performing teams.
San Jose Sabercats Monterey Jack QB S22 756 TPE
Phillip Stein S S23 528 TPE
Lawrence Bass LB S22 730 TPE
Deandre Thomas-Fox WR S19 818 TPE
Tychonderius Hood WR S23 601 TPE
Otis Allen DT S21 943 TPE
Mathew McDairmid K S22 750 TPE
Jamar Lackson RB S22 773 TPE
Top 5 Unprotected:
Yuuto Kira Cloudera DT S23 417 TPE
George Fisher LB S22 642 TPE
Matt Krause CB S22 639 TPE
Tyler Oles Jr CB S22 714 TPE
Leon McDavid TE S21 925 TPE
The Facts:
The Sabercats finished 9-7 and secured the first seed in the ASFC during the final week of the regular season. They do not own their own 4th round pick (New York via Baltimore) but they do own their first 3 rounds as well as Baltimore’s #4 overall. They can lose two players.
The Analysis:
Well that came out of nowhere didn’t it? San Jose started week 16 out of playoff position fighting for their life and ended it as the holder of home field advantage. Things even looked dire til the 4th quarter of that game when Nola had a 9 point lead and then bang. Benjamin Franklin with the key and the kite. San Jose gets electric and stuns the Second Line, nearly out of the playoffs entirely. Where did these Cats come from though? Should they even be here in this position? Or....like many have suggested (strongly in some cases), are they just lucky? Looking at the raw numbers I’m gonna lean towards mostly a case of being a solid team that took advantage of a good situation. They have a really solid roster led by a young QB. Honestly this team probably snuck up on a lot of people who thought it was worse than it is. Hell, they’ve even got some quality secondary pieces stashed in the DSFL that they need to find room for. So if you need an answer to why they don’t mind so much if you take some of their secondary, well now you have one. And on that note, let’s see what happens.
This one really depends on the plans of the two teams. From my perspective, you don’t get too many big active TE’s on the market like this. McDavid can be a big old safety blanket for whatever QB starts the franchise and that could be exactly what a fledgling offense needs. 60 6 yard passes are a great way to avoid an extra 30+ punts. Just saying. It had to be difficult for San Jose not to protect him to start with. And if given the chance, they will. So don’t. Make them protect Oles Jr. instead. And make your counterpart expansion team grab Krause. Which is not to say that’s not a pretty good pickup itself. Take that win to the bank. Just...in this case, McDavid is a superior player in a thinner position.
And where does this leave San Jose? Cruising. I can’t look at the roster and see any glaring current problems. I don’t know if this is really a top flight competitive roster but it’s certainly not far off. It certainly isn’t the kind of mirage that people may have thought it was. This is a legitimately solid team who’s biggest weakness as far as I can tell is that they haven’t adapted to the O-Line ERA. As questionable as the budget sheet may be right now as I write this, they still seem to have a lot of their roster locked up for a long time. There’s a mentality there that maybe didn’t exist some seasons ago, as per the Al_Gringo podcast I listened to regarding the team. They’ve got a lot of talent but no polish as of yet. But that could very well change and this team could keep surprising people the next several seasons. One request though…..if y’all somehow win the Ultimus (and I’m rooting for it at this point), Derpcat has to be on the banner somewhere.
Orange County Otters Korrin Abernathy CB S18 1383 TPE (20% Regression incoming)
Prince Vegeta S S21 964 TPE
Suleiman Ramza QB S22 704 TPE (Senddown)
Tyrone Biggums S 1247 TPE (20% Regression incoming)
Bob Bob S S23 480 TPE
Deshun Jones LB S22 779 TPE
Future Trunks WR S21 804 TPE
Tatsu Nakamura RB S22 743 TPE
Top 5 Unprotected:
Carl Wheezer DT S23 440 TPE
Jeffrey Phillips TE S22 700 TPE
Rapid Eagle DT S21 741 TPE
Lord Beerus CB S19 996 TPE
Douglas Quail OL S21 405 TPE
The Facts:
Orange County finished 9-7 and will host New Orleans in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. They own all of their first four picks as well as Sarasota’s 3rd rounder. They can lose up to two players in the expansion draft.
The Analysis:
Oceans rise. Empires fall. OCO has been dominant through it all. Can they continue that for the next several seasons? Well, that’s a good question. I think their playoff streak (running the entire history of the league) will stay intact for at least a bit. It’s possible that a combo of teams having great seasons could change this but right now I wouldn’t bet against them, even if they may not be the odds on favorite to win it all every year. The roster is fine. Could probably stand a little trimming to be honest. Especially given that they’re going to be adding 5 picks that are likely to be viable in the upcoming draft. And even with the GOAT Franklin Armstrong retiring, they’re all set up to continue as Ramza is ready to step in with almost no bumps in the road. Which is good as they’re gonna need some new blood and reserves are a tad thin (though not completely missing). By no means is this team in trouble, they’re simply not the deepest and most prepared in the league for essentially the first time. A noteworthy event in and of itself. Sometimes when you’re used to winning, fair play feels like being attacked. So...let’s see who they’re losing.
The question here, like with so many other teams, is gonna be timing and circumstance. Whatever happens right at the beginning is going to determine how the rest of the houses of cards fall. I think Phillips and Eagle are the best choices to start with but I feel like OCO knows this too. So I guess all you can really do is jump first and take the one you want. I presume the other will be protected. Then it becomes about where the 2nd team to pick is at with the rest of their chosen roster. Do you go for the young DT for the future or the high level CB that can be top level for a couple seasons (and then decent for a few more). That is a good question that I can’t really answer even though I’m gonna write a whole ass article at the end of this where I do exactly that. I tend to think go young. But we’ll see. I don’t know the strategy that New York and Frankfurt are planning on employing so I have to guess like everyone else. For all I know a team might already have a couple big time DL players under their belt by the time it comes time to make the decision.
And of course, after the smoke clears and the dominoes fall like a house of cards OCO is gonna do who knows what in the playoffs (good fucking luck predicting the ASFC) and then those draft picks they’re holding are gonna come into play hugely. For as much as I’m analytically saying OCO isn’t in the best position, they’re still OCO. They’re still the dragon that has to be slayed. And I doubt it’s doing more than taking a quick nap until I see real evidence otherwise. And any player who gets drafted here should still be excited. They’ve basically won the ottery. Don’t look at me like that.
Arizona Outlaws Desmond Scarlett CB S20 1047 TPE
Jay Cue QB S18 1443 TPE (20% Regression incoming)
Galf Wilf LB S20 890 TPE
Pete Miller DT S21 907 TPE
Stanislav Koniecpolski LB S22 720 TPE
Heath Evans TE S22 769 TPE
Zamir Kehla CB S22 742 TPE
DB Jadakiss S S23 558 TPE
Best 5 Unprotected:
Julio Jones OL S23 546 TPE
Joseph Petongolo RB S23 558 TPE
Claude Miller DT S22 628 TPE
Thomas Passman WR S22 714 TPE
Sandro Ryeu DE S22 711 TPE
The Facts:
Arizona finished 9-7 and will have the #8 pick in addition to the rest of their first four round picks. They can lose two picks in the expansion draft.
The Analysis:
First let’s address the obvious. The sim can suck it. Arizona came into week 16, won their game, fought their way into contention and then lost out on the playoffs by tiebreakers. Fine. It happens. And then the sim decided to display them as the 3rd finishing team in the conference while simultaneously presenting them as the 4th seed in the playoffs. That’s like stealing someone’s dog while you’re robbing their house. It’s just not cool. I’ve chosen to place them in the upper group for this series. It’s not much but it’s what I cna do. A rough ending for a team that managed to beat both Sarasota and Colorado and was full of energy after beating OCO at the start of the week. That said, their season has ended. And now they look ahead to continuing to build the future. Well….ok...in theory. In actuality they seem to have made a concentrated effort to hold onto some slightly older and much older big names. Normally this might be a headscratcher of a move. Truth be told though, there were easily 4-5 names that didn't make my list who are better than some of the people on some other teams’ lists. Arizona has a huge youth movement on its roster and the luxury of its future QB already waiting in the DSFL (and throwing me the ball). This feels like the team where expansion teams are most likely to do something entirely different than what I’m suggesting because it’s kind of wide open.
So...that said...let’s talk about who I think gets taken in the midst of Arizona’s “you can’t fucking take us all” strategy. Also known as “we’ve got reserves”. And sometimes “third joke here”. Let me make this simple. I take the OL player all day every day and twice on Sundays. Although that’s probably actually against the rules of the expansion draft if I’m being honest. Dammit Bex. Now, conventional wisdom would say you probably protect the DL players now. But in honesty, they have a full and thick DL and at least one player waiting in the wings. They probably protect the WR here and keep another target for Cue’s last couple seasons. After that, it's a matter of which expansion team pulls the trigger one which young star in the making. This is where thigns get tricky because it's insanely difficult to predict where teams will be at the point in the draft where these second choices are being made. There are so many ways it could shake out. The extended time and concentrated effort to make sure these teams can actually talk to unprotected players is a real game changing event.
Despite my reputation I don’t assume that I’m not always the smartest person in the room. And since I’m not in the room where it happens, I can’t guess what teams might do here. But I do know that when the smoke clears Arizona is going to take an impressive depth with a very solidly built team and they’re going to take another swing next season. This isn’t a team to count out based on what I’ve seen. This isn’t a S5 facade. It’s the real deal. The only bump I see in the near future is that Cue to Cortez changeover and from where I’m sitting it doesn’t look like it’s going to be as big of a bump as most other teams who are in the tedious process of transitioning.
And there you have it. Even after one of the wildest finishes I can recall where the week started with 3 teams that could have won home field advantage and 5 who could have made the playoffs, we still end with at least some normalcy, for lack of a better term. The real question for each of these teams is what the full offseason holds in terms of where they each go, as I believe each team listed here is in good position to grow forward. At least before fires, earthquakes, and whatever happens in the rest of 2020. I’m still leery about the murder hornets personally.
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