In the early years of the National Football League, scouting and roster development resembled the wild west. Drafts were held in hotel ballrooms the day after the last game of regular season college football was played. There was no combine, limited scouting, and no salary cap. Over time, these aspects have changed dramatically, in part due to key figures from Pete Rozelle to Gil Brandt to Bill Belichick. The development and learning from this time period have laid the foundational infrastructure that modern roster construction is based upon. In this modern day, managing a team and putting together a roster involves numerous people, intense scouting, layers of technology, and, critically, the management of the salary cap. Since it was first put into place in 1994, managing the cap has become an essential element of building and sustaining a successful team. The New England Patriots’ mastery of the cap is a large part of what enabled their dynastic run over the past twenty years. While their model has undoubtedly proven to be successful, an opposing model has become increasingly popular and yielded results of its own. Both models center around different distributions of the salary cap, starting with the portion paid to the starting quarterback. The Patriots dynasty was, in part, made possible due to their use of both models over the course of their dominance. Drafting, organizational culture, and coaching are all among the numerous critical factors in determining a team’s success and it becomes difficult to pinpoint the true source of success for any given team. Ultimately, however, effective management of the cap proves to be a force multiplier; it does not guarantee that a team will be successful, but it helps teams that handle the other variables well sustain their success.

This thesis is a marketing plan for a theoretical, potential expansion franchise that would be in San Antonio, Texas and be a part of the National Football League (NFL). There were five topics of marketing features which assist in planning an expansion franchise joining a professional sports league I wanted to cover: competitive analysis, customer analysis, target market identification, external environment, and SWOT analysis. In relation to the five topics, I was able to construct a Qualtrics Survey from a few hundred business students from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. This was necessary to determine demographics and collect data on what a random group would think of the five topics I chose in relation to an expansion team and the effects the expansion team could theoretically have in correspondence with all factors of a professional sports franchise. In conclusion, I was able to determine San Antonio would be able to sustain and have a NFL franchise whenever the time would be right to do so.

An examination upon the historical evolution of the quarterback reveals that there were three foundational cycles leading up to 2007 which established the model for the mobile quarterback in the NFL. These were especially marked by exceptional quarterbacks breaking molds and pioneering African American quarterbacks overcoming racial stigma. Since 2007, there has been a steady trend of mobile quarterbacks replacing pocket passers, especially among playoff teams. Using k-means clustering, three different categories of quarterbacks were established: pocket passers, scramblers, and dual-threats. After evaluating various player metrics describing quarterback mobility, using yards per game, run-to-pass ratio, scramble rate, and designed run rate on third down produced the best model. This yielded an accurate prediction of covariance and a good overall fit. Teams with dual-threat quarterbacks had more success than other quarterback types on third-and-medium for dropbacks, third-and-long for designed runs, and explosive plays (plays which gain 20+ yards) on designed runs, passes, and quarterback scrambles. An examination into the schematic tendencies using film reveals that mobile quarterbacks allow the offense to have more freedom in its play calling and reduces the margin of error for defenses. Alongside the NFL’s increased focus on the concept of positionless football, this provides the framework for what this thesis calls the “Slashback Offense,” in which the offense utilizes a young, athletic quarterback in multiple positions in conjunction with a mobile starting quarterback. This can enhance option plays, establish the threat of another passer, and reduce the physical burden on the starting quarterback.