NFL All-Backup Team: Could a roster of bench players contend? - ESPN

When I was researching how Super Bowl teams are built a couple of weeks ago, I was starkly reminded of just how much great teams and the biggest moments can come down to players on the bottom of the roster.

Think about David Tyree and Malcolm Butler, then backups at their respective positions, making two of the most important plays in Super Bowl history. The Philly Special saw Eagles backup QB Nick Foles catch a touchdown pass from No. 3 tight end Trey Burton. Even last season, the Seahawks got three sacks in their title win over the Patriots from reserves Derick Hall and Rylie Mills.

Everybody would love to have their starters stay healthy and productive all season, but in the NFL, that's never going to happen. Every team relies on its backups to chip in at some point on a weekly basis. That got me wondering: If we built an entire team out of the best backups in football, would that roster be competitive with other teams, even without a single Week 1 starter in the lineup? What would it tell us about where teams are thinnest — or deepest — around the league?

So I've built a 53-man roster of backups. Some of these players are rotation guys, and I'd expect a few to be starters by the end of the season. But they all realistically have other players likely to play ahead of them in the starting lineup in Week 1. In some cases, I had to pick between two roughly similar talents, so I chose the player I thought was less likely to get the lion's share of the work in that rotation.

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Naturally, I gave myself a few rules. I wanted to take a big-picture look around the entire league, so I forced myself to take at least one backup from each team — but no more than two. And to build a vaguely