Introducing the XFL - The XFL player draft

This offseason just gone saw a brief glimpse of what will hopefully become the norm: spring football. The Alliance of American Football, better known as the AAF, debuted and was supposed to show the future of football. Unfortunately, reportedly due to a misleading and selfish majority owner, a promising startup crumbled and folded after only eight of their 10 scheduled regular season games.

I was disappointed. I’d researched and written in detail and length about the league. I’d spoken to its founder, Charlie Ebersol, along with Phil Savage, the Arizona Hotshots' general manager. Their vision for the league and belief in the league was incredible, and the early returns, on the field at least, were good and within the vision they had – one of providing entertaining, faster-paced, innovative and competitive football.

It wasn’t to be. However, thankfully we still have the same to look forward to this spring. A re-launch of the XFL, the once defunct competitor to the NFL, is arriving with a mission very much similar to the AAF’s.

The Dallas Renegades, Houston Roughnecks, Los Angeles Wildcats, New York Guardians, St. Louis BattleHawks, Seattle Dragons, Tampa Bay Vipers and Washington D.C. Defenders will play a 10-game regular season followed by playoffs. The XFL plan to ‘re-imagine’ football by speeding up the game with more plays and fewer interruptions.

Ahead of their kickoff in February, the eight teams must first pick their roster. The league announced on October 7, the XFL player draft will take place on Tuesday October 15 and Wednesday October 16.

The initial player pool includes roughly 1,000 players and are being announced over five days. As they are announced, they are not listed by positions, so, I am going to be doing that for you.

QB | RB | WR | TE | OL | DE | DT | LB | CB | SAF | ST

Just from a look at the list of players, there are many that catch my attention who I think are a good sign for the quality we can expect to see come February. For example, Cameron Artis-Payne, Andre Williams, Trent Richardson, Brandon Oliver, Charles James, Terrance Williams, Matt Jones, Joe Callahan and many more. 

With all of the eligible players announced, all that's left is to draft. The XFL draft won’t look like the NFL Draft fans have grown to love and watch. It will be as follows:

One QB will be assigned to each team before a five-phased draft. Phase one will be skill players (QB, RB, WR, TE), phase two will be offensive line, phase three will be the defensive front seven (DL, LB), phase four will be the defensive backfield (CB, S), before phase five which will be an open draft of the remaining players.

The teams will have to populate a 71-man initial roster, 40 of which will come in the first four phases before being completed in the open phase. The order was decided by lottery and will be a snake order, meaning the order reverses in each round (the team with the first pick in one round will pick last in the next and so forth).

After the draft I plan on digging into each roster to give you positional rankings, projections and make this the go to platform for XFL content. 

Join me for the ride!

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