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Kathy Willens/Associated Press

Every NFL team has 53 faces on the regular-season roster. Then a handful of other faces on the sideline are often red, possibly with adult language flowing from their mouths (pictured!). And high above in suites on game day there are important faces. The kind of esteemed faces with personal eyeglass cleaners.

Some teams even have a menacing face as their logo, though the British-gentleman versions are a wee bit less frightening.

Among all those faces, there is one that represents each franchise. Usually it’s the most talented player, but not always. Often it’s the most productive player, but not always.

Assigning a franchise face can be arbitrary and open to different definitions. For me, identifying 32 of them throughout the league means answering a simple question: Which face comes to mind immediately when you hear or read a team’s name?

There can be many answers to the NFL Rorschach test I’ll attempt for each team. Often it will be easy, and just as often anchoring a franchise to one face will mean eliminating other equally important ones. You’ll surely approve of each pick, and if you don’t the “honorable mentions” will allow for convenient disagreement.

I’ll also be using a highly scientific gauge called the “Nana Index”, which was first perfected years ago by my former colleague Drew Fairservice.

Being a franchise face is primarily about what happens on Sunday/Monday/Thursday in each week and each season. But to some degree it also requires name recognition in pop culture beyond football. So on a scale of one to 10, what’s the likelihood each NFL franchise face and its corresponding name is recognized by your nana?

My deepest apologies to the passionate, football-maniac grandmas out there. If you’re blessed to have one in your life, mentally substitute someone else who probably thinks Sam Bradford is a local used-car salesman (the future?).

Alright, then—let’s start slapping faces with franchise tags.