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. Subscribe: 'The Bill Barnwell Show' 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 realistic roster, I went after players who participate regularly on special teams to help fill out the back end of our lineup.
We've got specialists, including a long-snapper. Our team will run with the NFL's trends, so I leaned into multiple tight end sets on offense and a Vic Fangio-style defense, hoping to get pressure with the front four while limiting big plays on the back end.
(Spoiler: There will be big plays.) I also wanted to incorporate rookies, so I picked one player from each round of the 2026 draft to be part of the roster, as long as they aren't expected to start for their new team to open the season. As you can probably surmise, that rule opened up one potential difference-maker for our team, and I'll get to him in a bit.
I'll go team-by-team to identify which players I picked for what I'm calling "Team Backup" and why they're a good fit for our roster. You can see the full roster -- along with my take on whether it could compete in the NFL -- at the bottom.
Jump to backups selected from: ARI | ATL | BAL | BUF | CAR | CHI | CIN CLE | DAL | DEN | DET | GB | HOU | IND JAX | KC | LAC | LAR | LV | MIA | MIN NE | NO | NYG | NYJ | PHI | PIT | SF SEA | TB | TEN | WSH Jump to: The full Team Backup roster Could this roster contend in the NFL? AFC EAST Buffalo Bills C Lloyd Cushenberry III , TE Jackson Hawes If great teams are really built through the trenches, we'll need to start in Buffalo by landing two important blockers.
Center is a perilously thin spot around the NFL, especially when trying to find players who aren't inked in as starters. Cushenberry was a big-ticket free agent signing in Tennessee a couple of years ago, but a torn Achilles set him back, leading to his release this offseason.
We'll give him a shot as our starting pivot in 2026. Hawes was a fifth-round pick in last year's draft because of his impact as a blocker, which allowed the Bills to shift away from the six-lineman sets they used with Alec Anderson in 2024 to more 12 and 13 personnel groupings in 2025.
Hawes will be our primary blocking tight end, and if he can continue his rookie rate and catch 84% of the passes thrown his way, he should get some targets in the passing game, too. Miami Dolphins OT Jamaree Salyer , K Zane Gonzalez Let's get the kicker off the board!
The Dolphins are one of the few teams with two veteran kickers on their roster, so Gonzalez is an easy pick for us after hitting 86.4% of his attempts last season in Atlanta. Salyer is a swing tackle who did a solid job at left tackle as a rookie in 2022 with the Chargers; having a sixth or seventh lineman with real experience on the blind side is a relative luxury.
New England Patriots WR DeMario Douglas , DT Cory Durden Douglas might be our team's top wide