ESPN could rename itself the Raiders. At least when it comes to its latest initiative.

Queue the NFL Films music and Steve Sabol’s famous lines from The Autumn Wind:

He growls as he storms the country,

A villain big and bold.

And the trees all shake and quiver and quake,

As he robs them of their gold.

OK, perhaps that’s a big dramatic. However, you can sure a few sports editors feel as if they lost some of their gold, thanks to ESPN.

ESPN.com plans to have a blogger cover every NFL team this year. And where are they getting those bloggers? In many cases, they are beat writers and columnists from the major newspapers in those towns.

Almost on the hour it seems, there’s another announcement of reporters talking of making the jump.

Yesterday, there was this tweet from Jeff Legwold, now formerly of the Denver Post:

It’s official, I’m excited to join the already deep NFL roster at ESPN. I’ll cover the #Broncos so I don’t actually have to change seats…

Last week, Rob Demovsky, who spent 16 years at Green Bay Gazette, departed to cover the Packers for ESPN. After staying only a month, John Keim left the Washington Post to become ESPN’s Redskins insider.

Keim sent out this amusing tweet:

I’m telling people that Shirley Povich and I combined for 75 years (at the Post).

Yesterday, Rob King, ESPN’s senior vice president for content, digital & print media, told Andrew Beaujon of Poynter, of the plans for ESPN.com. All told 19 writers will be hired to go along with those ESPN already has in place.

From the post:

The idea is basically to give fans more content about the teams they obsess over, King said. ESPN.com Editor-in-Chief Patrick Stiegman looked at the site’s data for how much time users spent on the top 100 teams it covered. Of the 32 teams at the top of that list, 31 were NFL teams.

The Jacksonville Jaguars were the only NFL team that didn’t make that list, King said, but he said ESPN decided to cover all the teams anyway. Had ESPN made a selective foray into more intense local coverage last year — a move he said it considered — it might have skipped covering the Indianapolis Colts, he said. “We would have been absolutely wrong,” he said, citing Andrew Luck’s fantastic 2012 and coach Chuck Pagano’s battle with cancer. “Who’s to say they couldn’t have an incredible season?” King said of the Jaguars.

Here’s where it makes even more sense for ESPN.com. The individual team coverage will be available for free on the site. Meanwhile, many newspapers are behind a pay wall for their content.

From Poynter:

King said ESPN’s motivation is not eating dailies’ lunch; it’s more a matter of filling the “buckets of content” fans expect when they register with the site and say what their favorite teams are.

“We’re not doing that because we’re trying to compete or invade anybody’s market,” he said. “We just feel like the way we build stuff now drives us to getting to this level of coverage.”

Yeah but, those fans only have so much time to devote to reading about their teams. ESPN.com definitely will be looking to make inroads in those markets.

Meanwhile, if you’re a sports editor, it can’t be a good feeling to lose your beat writer or a key member of your staff for the local NFL team just before the start of the season.

And if ESPN.com hasn’t filled its spot for your local team, sports editors should be sure to keep their beat writers extra happy in the upcoming weeks.