League Expansion? How Would That Work?

(Nothing in this post was created using any sort of generative AI)

There has obviously been lots of talk around the league with rumours flying that the league might expand from 10 teams to 12 teams. Expansion seems to be a popular idea from a few owners in this league, but we will need a formal vote to decide on it. For such a monumental change to this league, the vote will have to be a unanimous decision meaning all 10 owners will have to vote "Yes" to expansion. Prior to this vote every owner in the league should read this article that details all the possible changes to the league, and how the expansion draft will happen. Important to note that if the league votes unanimously to expand, a 2nd vote will be held to determine what year expansion will take place. Voting "Yes" to the 1st poll will not mean expansion happens immediately but will happen sometime in the future. Whichever year gets the majority, this will not need to be unanimous.

Expansion Draft Setup

The two expansion franchises will be drafting from a pool of players that consists of unprotected players from everyone's rosters and current players on the waivers/free agents. Each team will be allowed to protect 14 total players. This will be in the form of a starting lineup (1QB, 2RB, 2WR, 1TE, 2Flex, 1K, 1D/ST) along with 4 additional players.

In the event that rosters/the starting lineup is expanded due to future rule changes, the protection list will be changed to reflect the new starting lineup and additional players will stay the same (I will be proposing rule changes next week). Everyone else that is not on that protected list will be eligible to be selected during the draft. Players must be submitted at least one week prior to the expansion draft to allow the commissioner time to consolidate the names into a list for the expansion franchises.

A coin flip will occur and the winner of that coin flip can either choose to select first in the expansion draft, or select first (5th instead of 6th) in the upcoming rookie draft. The Expansion Draft will be a linear format, with teams alternating picks. Each expansion team can select UP TO 3 players per existing franchise. Meaning, if a team drafts say Blake Corum, Jalen McMillan, and Rashid Shaheed from the Walk Me Jeanty franchise, they will not be able to select anyone else from that team. But the other expansion team can select 3 other players. This means that you can lose up to 6 total players from your unprotected list. This is an attempt at ensuring existing teams do not lose all of their depth by expansion teams only picking players from one or two teams. Players that are on waivers/free agents have no restrictions and can be drafted many times as expansion teams would like. A total of 20 rounds will be conducted. This allows for the expansion teams to have space afterwards for the rookie draft.

Post Expansion Draft

After this expansion draft, roster sizes will be reduced from 24 down to 22. This is an attempt at salvaging a waiver wire that will be closer to a wasteland than before. I will be giving teams some grace in between the rookie draft and when benches shrink to give teams some time to make roster decisions. Once the benches shrink by 2 players, if you are over the roster limit, you will not be able to make any additions to your team via the waiver wire/free agency, but trading will still be available.

Now for the rookie draft, each round will now be 12 picks with the two new teams in it. The two expansion teams will be given pick 5 and 6 in the rookie draft, opposite to the order of the expansion draft. If Team A picked 1st in the expansion draft, they will pick 6th in the rookie draft. Now since the expansion teams will be quite weak, one of the ways to somewhat supplement their teams will be to give them an extra pick at the end of the first round. After the first 12 picks have been selected, the draft will be paused and the expansion teams will be granted supplemental picks. Since there is no way for me to add supplemental draft picks on the Sleeper App, I will just pause the draft, and manually add the selected players to a team. This may be a bit clunky but is the easiest way with the current set up. The order of the supplemental picks will be reverse of the expansion draft. This sounds confusing but an easier way to visualize this is:

Team A: Expansion pick 1 + 1.06 + 2.02

Team B: Expansion pick 2 + 1.05 + 2.01

This might seem like Team B is getting more value, but the first expansion pick will be more likely to produce fantasy points than the 1.05 or a 2nd rounder. For reference, Harold Fannin (the first expansion pick in my made up scenario) scored more fantasy points than the 1.05, 1.06, 2.01, and 2.02 in the last draft (Travis Hunter, Treveyon Henderson, Luther Burden, and Tre Harris were the selections). This might seem like the expansion teams are getting an unfair advantage in the draft, but if you look at this spreadsheet, you will realize that the expansion teams are likely to be pretty bad and will need the extra selections. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16LUkLS9NQICbftMM6RSeD_oNr9WAg0Dbi5RBHDk-S4/edit?usp=sharing I even added a mock expansion draft with the results just to the right of the available players list.

The teams are simply bad. Like it will take them a few years to get competitive, they will need the supplemental picks.

With the expansion the league will be structured a little differently. As mentioned previously, the roster sizes will be decreased by two spots so the waivers can have a tiny bit of life. IR and Taxi spots will not be affected and stay the same. The Playoffs will expand from 6 teams to 8 teams, giving more teams an opportunity at making the playoffs but also removing the bye weeks for seeds 1 and 2.

Just a reminder that the 1st poll will be if the league is okay with expansion happening at some point (and not immediately). The 2nd poll (if the 1st is unanimous) will be about what year/offseason will expansion occur. If an expansion does happen, we will likely need to revisit or get rid of some rules, especially ones that I will be bringing next week in my rule proposal article next week.