Taking over an existing franchise means inheriting someone else's contracts, someone else's quarterback, and someone else's mistakes. Starting an expansion team means inheriting nothing — a $300M cap with $0 on it, three years of draft picks, and a roster assembled from what 30 other teams were willing to leave unprotected. It is the purest rebuild in BS Football, and it rewards GMs who understand how the expansion draft actually works.

When and How Expansion Happens

Expansion is only available during the offseason — the re-signing, free agency, draft, or general offseason phases. You pick a city, name, colors, conference and division, and you can add one team or two. Once the new franchise exists, you choose whether to keep running your current team or take over the expansion club.

The new team starts with a full, freshly generated coaching staff, a complete set of draft picks (all seven rounds for each of the next three drafts), default owner and fan approval, and an empty roster that the expansion draft fills.

Protection Lists

Before the draft, every existing team protects part of its roster. The protection limit depends on roster size: 15 players if the roster is larger than 45, 12 if it is larger than 40, otherwise 10. For a standard 53-man roster, that is 15 protected and 38 exposed.

AI teams protect automatically, and the rule they use tells you exactly who will be available. They sort by overall rating, with two thumbs on the scale: quarterbacks get an enormous bonus (effectively always protected), and players 26 and under get a five-point bump. So the exposed pool is tilted toward older players and non-quarterbacks. If you are running an existing team when expansion happens, you set your own list — and that same logic applies to what you should keep.

How the Expansion Draft Picks

The expansion team takes exactly one player from every existing team — one per team, no doubling up. For each team, the draft looks at that club's unprotected players and ranks them by overall, with a 10-point boost for any position where the expansion roster is still under its minimum. It then picks from the top three with weighted odds: the best available is chosen most often, but the second and third get real chances. You do not always get the best exposed player on each roster.

If two expansion teams are added, the second one drafts in reverse team order so neither club gets all the best leftovers.

After the draft, any position still below its roster minimum is filled with generated players, and the roster is padded to 53 with more of them. These filler players are rated 55–62 overall, aged 24 to 28, with one to four years of experience. They are replacement-level by design.

What Your Year-One Roster Really Looks Like

Do the math. About 30 of your 53 players are each the best (or second- or third-best) unprotected player from a different team — typically veterans in the 60s and low 70s, because anything better and younger was protected. The remaining 20-plus are 55–62 fillers. Your quarterback is almost certainly a backup somewhere else last year, because starting quarterbacks are never exposed.

That is a roster whose top-22 starter average is likely in the low 60s, which means your owner will set a win target of 4–6 games and hand you a development objective — probably "draft and start a rookie," since you will not have two high-potential young players yet. Those are achievable goals. Hit them and you bank approval while the real roster is being built.

Your Real Asset: $300M of Cap Space

The drafted veterans bring their existing contracts, and the fillers are cheap, so you will enter free agency with more room than any team in the league. This is your weapon, and there are two ways to use it.

Buy a quarterback and a few cornerstones

Free agency prices rise for losing teams (a 10% premium on re-signs for sub-.400 clubs) but a brand-new franchise has no record yet. Spend on the one or two positions that matter most — quarterback first, then an edge rusher or a cornerback — and accept that the rest of the roster is a placeholder.

Absorb bad contracts for picks

Teams over the cap will pay in draft capital to move money. With $200M-plus of room, you can take on a contract nobody wants and collect the pick that comes with it. Your year-one win total does not matter much; your 2027 and 2028 draft hauls do.

A Three-Year Plan

Year one: survive and stockpile

Meet the 4–6 win target. Start a rookie to satisfy the development objective. Fill every position-coach slot — an empty slot is a 10% drag on development, and development is the whole point this year. Convert cap space into extra picks wherever you can. Do not extend any of the drafted veterans unless they are 26 or under.

Year two: draft the core

With your own first-rounder near the top of the board plus whatever you bought, this is the draft that decides the franchise. Take the quarterback if you did not buy one. Spend Deep Scouts on the picks that matter. Let the veterans from the expansion draft walk as their deals expire; they were never the plan.

Year three: contend for a playoff spot

By now the owner's win target will have climbed with your roster. That is fine — the cap room you preserved in years one and two is what lets you add two or three starters in one free-agency cycle and make the jump. Your young core is still cheap, which is the rookie-contract window every dynasty is built on.

Mistakes to Avoid

Spending all the cap in year one. A 60-rated roster plus three expensive free agents is still a 63-rated roster, and now you have no room for the players you draft.
Paying the drafted veterans. They are older, non-quarterback, and were exposed for a reason. Let them go.
Ignoring the coaching staff. Your generated staff is random. Check the scheme your coordinators run before you draft or sign a quarterback, and upgrade position coaches early — they are cheap and they compound.
Chasing the win target with trades. Lopsided trades cost owner approval, and the owner already gave you a low bar. Hit it the honest way.

The Bottom Line

An expansion franchise in BS Football starts with one good-but-old player from every team, twenty replacement-level fillers, a backup quarterback, a full coaching staff, three drafts' worth of picks and a completely empty cap sheet. Everything about year one is designed to be survivable — low win target, development goals, no record to inflate prices. The GMs who struggle are the ones who try to win immediately. The ones who build something treat year one as a draft-capital accumulation exercise and year two as the real beginning.

Ready to build from nothing? Play BS Football free in your browser and launch a 32nd team.

Expansion Franchise Guide: Surviving Year One With a 32nd Team