So you’re a struggling mediocre NFL franchise who wants to win it big (I’m looking at you browns) – Here’s your guide on how to do just that.
First you need some money to hire the best staff around, a large number of highly qualified people. The great thing is staff provide a tremendous benefit and don’t have a cap, so hire as many college and nfl guys as you can. I’m talking enough scouts to get a full review of every single player in high school football down to D5. Get info from colleges, then you’re going to follow this class and the next two through college.
Second you want to start a fire sale, sell everything in exchange for picks, I don’t care if it’s a mouthpiece – if you can get a pick for it, do it. This includes taking on overpaid contracts for picks, remember the Brock osweiler trade? Or the Brandon cooks trade? Trades like that.
Sign those crazy charity cases, hoping you can flip them for picks: Ray rice? You get a 2nd chance; Antonio Brown come on down. These guys have something to prove so play them as hard as possible, and trade them when you can.
Sign a bunch of scrubs to fill out your roster – Tim Tebow? He’s back baby, playing running back – with a lot of Hb passes. These scrubs will play on minimum nfl contracts.
Hire a coach that knows how to loose – I’m looking at you hue Jackson, and let him go to work. Make sure he’s paid well too.
This will be a train wreck. But here’s your goal for the first 3 seasons. stay under cap, which you will due to the aforementioned scrubs on minimum contracts: the minimum salary for a 53 man roster is $26.5 million, plus let’s say $13.5 million for players like Antonio Brown, so $40 million a year is your player budget. Your second goal is to never draft a player during those first three years, trade every pick, even if the next Lawrence Taylor appears in the draft don’t fucking draft him.
Make sure the fans know that you’re tanking, make it clear.
Also move your francisé to a new city/build a new stadium and make it the biggest in the nfl.
Your first 3 years you will tank to the #1 overall pick, and you’ll trade it for 3 future 1st rounders, do this with every pick: ex a 7 for 3 future 7th rounders. Rinse and repeat.
The second draft you have two 1st rounders, trade both of them for 3 future 1st rounders, do this with every pick for 3 years.
I call this compounding picks, the same way as compounding interest, it’s fucking important and broken.
Let’s say you got an entire drafts worth of picks from your 2nd chance projects and shitty scrub players actually playing well. And you got 8 picks in each round from your past drafts – assuming you got 2 picks each time for trading down – and on top of that you have another full drafts worth of picks before your 4th year you have 70 picks in this upcoming draft: including 10 1st rounders and the #1 overall pick. Does this sound like madden, yes, and even though you may not get this number of picks, if you get more value each time you trade down then you would end up with a hell of a lot.
You also have one more advantage – Cap Space: Yes, I mean specifically you have only paid $40 million a year, and luckily the cap space rolls over; so if there’s an average of $200 million a year, you would add $160 million x3 or $480 million in emergency cap space. But they’re not going to spend this yet.
Here’s some rules for your first draft: Don’t draft Recievers or runningbacks in the first round, Focus on OL, DL, LB, DB in the first draft; Sign your players to very long contracts and pay good players early. The earlier the draft pick the better, anything after round 5 doesn’t matter, so we’re trading all of those picks for 2 extra 1st rounders, and all of our 3rd, 4th and 5th rounders for 3 extra 1st rounders. Why? Because first rounders are so much more valuable than any other round. So 15 1st rounders. Also if a player is a bust we trade him
If we’d followed this model in the 2014/15 draft we’d get:
1. Clowney DE Pro Bowl
2. Robinson Bust
3. Mack DE Hall of Fame
4. Matthews OT – Pro Bowl
5. Gilbert Bust
6. Anthony Barr Lb – Pro Bowl
7. Taylor Lewan OT – Pro Bowl
8. Aaron Donald DT – Hall of Fame
9. Kyle Fuller CB – Pro Bowl
10. Ryan Shazier LB – Pro Bowl
11. Zac Martin OG- Hall of Fame
12. CJ Mosley LB – Pro Bowl
13. Calvin Pryor Bust
14. Ha-Ha Clinton-Dix S – Pro Bowl
15. Dee Ford Dt – Pro Bowl
In our first season we drafted 3 hall of famers, 9 pro bowlers and 3 busts. This seems like it would get us a few more wins, but we’re tanking. Also I didn’t put second rounders down, because I’m too lazy so instead of going through 12 2nd rounders I’ll just do 4 extra 1st rounders next year. I’ll assume the average cap hit is $4 million per player or $60 million, this brings our emergency cap space to $580 million, a lot of money.
The next season here are our needs:
Qb
Rb
Wr
Wr
Wr
Te
Og
C
Lb
Cb
Cb
S
Here’s who we draft:
1. Famous Jameis Winston – QB Pro Bowl, on this team he will play to a pro bowl level
2. Amari Cooper – Wr Pro Bowl
3. Brandon Scheriff – OG Pro Bowl
4. Kevin White Wr Bust
5. Vic Beasley – LB Pro Bowl
6. Todd Gurley – RB Pro Bowl
7. Trae Waynes – CB Starter
8. Devonte Parker – WR Starter
9. Kevin Johnson – Cb Bust
10. Eric Flowers – OL Bust
11. Damirious Randall S – Starter
Since all of the teams needs are filled Picks 12-14 are going to be traded to next year.
Here’s our stats – 4 Pro bowlers, 3 starters and 3 busts $4 million a player is the average assumption for cap room, half of the scrub players are gone, and the three busts from last year are packaged for a future 1st, that’s none of our emergency cap gone. I’m also going to trade all other picks in next years draft r2-r7 for a first $580 million emergency cap left.
I assume a roster with 3 hall of famers and 12 pro bowlers would make the playoffs normally, but luckily we gave jameis 1 year to develop behind some old an like josh Mccown and tanked. We have 6 1st round picks and after trading away last years busts we have an extra pick.
Here’s our needs:
Wr
Te
C
Cb
1. We’re trading the 1st nfl draft pick for cash considerations, and a 3rd that’s right, someone can buy it for a cool $70 million out of their cap space, from a crappy team. That brings our total up to $650 million.
2. Jaylen Ramsey Cb – Hall of Fame
3. Ronnie Stanlie OL – Pro Bowl
4. Corey Coleman Wr – Bust
5. Austin Hooper Te – Pro Bowl (I needed to finally draft a Te of some kind)
That’s right we added a hall of famer, a pro bowler and a bust to our roster and + $58 million to the cap. That’s $638 million left. So now it’s time to pay out some contracts right? For the sake of simplicity I’ll assume ten years of success before the team breaks down to hell, so let’s give everyone 10 year contracts, and hire a new coach with a 10 year contract himself; say hello to Jon Gruden.
If everyone gets a positional average over 10 years here’s the breakdown by year:
Qb: 16 million
RB: 9 million
WR: 24 million (2 good recievers)
Te: 7 million
OL: 55 million (5 linemen)
DL: 48 million (4 linemen)
LB: 33 million (3 linebackers)
CB: 30 million (3 backs)
S: 16 million (2 safeties)
Reserves: 30 mkllion
That’s a total of $250 million a year
Plus let’s go out on the open market and trade for a good wide receiver as it’s our only new
$10 million onto the cap so $260 million, or $60 million over cap. This would be bad except for our emergency fund, if we divide it by $10 years we have an extra $65 million per year. After everything we still have $5 million a year in flexibility.
That’s 4 hall of famers, 14 pro bowlers (including the wr we traded for), 4 good starters and some decent backups locked up for 10 years to build chemistry. An average Super Bowl champion has 7 pro bowlers, and usually a hall of famer or two; we doubles that, we have quite possibly the greatest defense and offensive lines ever; especially defense – we can get 34 sacks a season rushing four, but we’ve got Vic Beasley so that’s 41, plus all other starters, around 50 just from our s
tarters, 4 sacks per game over the course of a decade.
Ricky J. Smith 