With preseason and training camp in the rear-view mirror, all that is left for the New England Patriots to do before the start of the regular season is to put the finishing touches on their first 53-man roster.
That process will be an ongoing one throughout the year, but Tuesday will see a first major deadline. By 4 p.m. ET, they and the other 31 teams in the NFL need to be under the league-mandated 53-man roster limit. This means that more than 1,000 players will be out of a job — in some cases temporarily, in others permanently — included several previously employed by the Patriots.
In order to stay on top of every move, please make sure to visit our Patriots roster cuts tracker as well as our regularly updated Patriots depth chart. As for cutdown day itself, here is what to expect over the coming hours, and what all of that means for New England.
How do NFL roster cuts work?
The Patriots can reduce the number of players on their active roster in multiple ways. The most straight-forward of which is simply cutting a player: if a player gets cut, he is off the active roster. However, as with all things pro football, there is some nuance to the process.
The league, after all, makes a distinction between players getting waived or released based on their experience.
Waived: Players with less than four years of experience (i.e. having been on an active roster or injury list for a minimum of six weeks) will be placed on waivers and therefore available to any other team. Based on the 2025 draft order, clubs can put in an indefinite number of claims on players as long as roster capacities and the salary cap are not violated.
The Patriots have fourth priority at the moment based on their 4-13 record last year. As a consequence, only three other clubs — Tennessee, Cleveland and New York — could snatch players away from them if they so choose.
When it comes to waiver wire pickups, teams have until Wednesday, 12 p.m. ET to sign them to their 53-man rosters. This means that spots on the active team need to either be open or created for any waiver wire pickup. If a player clears waivers unclaimed, he enters free agency just like vested veterans do. A player would then be free to sign with any team’s active roster or practice squad, including his original one.
Additionally, teams can waive players with an injury designation. If they go unclaimed, they would automatically revert to a team’s injured reserve list — a process the Patriots are quite familiar with, having employed it three times already since the start of training camp in late July: offensive linemen Yasir Durant and Layden Robinson as well as defensive tackle Isaiah Iton both were waived/injured by the club.
Released: As opposed to the players headed for waivers, so-called vested veterans have four or more years of service under their respective belts. They will get released and hit free agency right away, meaning that they are eligible to negotiate with any team without first entering the waiver wire.
How does injured reserve work?
To reduce the number of players under contract, teams can also place them on one of the reserve lists available. The most prominent among them is injured reserve (IR). It is used on players that have suffered an injury at some point and will be out for an extended period of time. Players will need to miss at least four games when sent to IR.
Up until 2023, any player moved there before 4:01 p.m. ET on the second post-cutdown day (i.e. Wednesday) would have been ineligible to be reactivated later during the season. The NFL, however, changed those rules last offseason.
As a result, teams can now reactivate up to two players sent to IR on the final day of roster cuts (i.e. Tuesday before 4 p.m. ET). If New England, for example, moves up to two of its currently-injured players there and designates them for return, they would not count against the initial 53-man roster limit but still be allowed to come back after the first four weeks of the season. At that point, follow-up moves to create space on the 53-man team will be necessary.
Overall, clubs are allowed to bring eight players back from IR. Like those moved there on the day of final cuts, they will have to sit out a minimum of four games before being allowed to return to the 53-man roster. A player cannot go through this process more than twice a year.
Players not designated to return ahead of the 4 p.m. ET deadline on Tuesday, or already sent to IR at an earlier point this year, are out for the season. In order for them to return to an active roster at some point, they would have to be cut from IR with an injury settlement. Once the settlement ends, they are eligible to sign with any team. They also can re-sign with their original team after the length of the injury settlement, plus an extra three weeks.
How do PUP and NFI work?
Besides sending players to injured reserve, teams can also move them to the physically unable to perform (PUP) or non-football injury/illness (NFI) lists. There is a caveat, though: they would already need to have been there at the start of training camp and cannot retroactively be sent there.
What is the difference between those two? In the most basic of terms, it all comes down to the origin of the injury necessitating a move to one of the lists in the first place.
If it happened at the team’s facility or during an NFL game, the player will be sent to PUP. If the injury happened in college or outside of team supervision, however, NFI is the place to go.
The main difference, however, is player compensation. While players on PUP are entitled to their salary, those on NFI are not. Teams can still elect to pay them their salary, but the CBA allows them to renegotiate a different number.
If a player starts training camp on either list, their status will originally be set to “active” meaning that they do count against the roster at the moment. A team then has two options: either move them to the 53-man team ahead of the roster cutdown deadline, or keep them on PUP or NFI and flip the switch to “reserve” status. At that point, they would have to sit out at least four games before being allowed to re-join the club.
A player is ineligible to be moved back to PUP (or NFI for that matter) if they have participated in practice or played in a preseason game.
How else can a roster be reduced?
Besides the methods mentioned above, teams also have a handful of other tools at their disposal, all of them pretty self-explanatory.
Reserve/retired: If a player retires, he will be moved there and no longer count against the roster limit. A team retains his rights for however long he is on that list.
Reserve/suspended or Commissioner’s exempt list: Both lists deal with players potentially facing discipline or in legal limbo. The first is relevant for all types of infractions as classified by the NFL, the latter can be used by commissioner Roger Goodell’s to keep players from participating in team activities if there are ongoing investigations or other matters possible impacting their status. Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers spent time on the Commissioner’s exempt list last season after an arrest.
Trade: Not much to explain here. Teams could decide to trade players to get them off the team, as happened with third-string quarterback Joe Milton back in April. Obviously, player-for-player moves or simply acquiring a player via trade in exchange for a draft pick also is an option. Neither would reduce the roster count, however.
What does this mean for the Patriots?
The Patriots and other teams — by using the methods explained above — will have to bring their active rosters under the 53-player limit mandated by the league. The deadline to do that, as mentioned above, is 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
The team of head coach Mike Vrabel already started reducing its roster over the weekend, removing a combined 15 players from the active squad. Entering Tuesday, their roster therefore stands at 76. This means that at least 23 more moves will follow.
To get to those moves, the methods outlined above can be used. Not all of them are applicable to the team’s current situation, though. For example, the Patriots currently have no players on the PUP and NFI lists.
Along the way, New England also will have to make a decision on defensive tackle David Olajiga before 4 p.m. ET. Still carrying a roster exemption due to his status as a participant in the NFL’s International Player Pathway Program, he will have to be either officially move to the 53-man roster or be removed from the active team via one of the methods outlined above.
Transactions may be reported ahead of that deadline, even though teams could wait significantly longer before making any moves public. Again, we encourage you to follow our Patriots roster cuts tracker to stay on top of all the latest developments.
Once roster cutdowns are over, the scramble for talent begins. Clubs have until 12 p.m. ET on Wednesday to put waiver claims in to acquire non-vested players. If they are awarded a player, they have one hour to make room for him on their active 53-man roster.
The Patriots will remain the fourth spot in the waiver claim order at least until after Week 3 of the regular season, when the list is no longer determined by draft status but in-season record. So far this offseason, they have taken advantage of their position on one occasion: in early August, they claimed cornerback Tre Avery off waivers from the San Francisco 49ers.
One hour after the claiming period has closed, at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday, teams can also start building their practice squads. Up to 16 players can be signed with six of those spots available for players regardless of their experience in the NFL.
A little bit further down the line, lies the end of the NFL’s Top-51 rule. As opposed to the offseason, all contracts on the 53-man roster — plus those on practice squads and injured reserve — will count against the salary cap beginning 12 a.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 4. As far as their salary cap is concerned, the Patriots are in good shape: according to Miguel Benzan, they have $59.55 million available at the moment.
Have the Patriots made some moves?
As noted above, New England has already made several moves. And they are not done yet given that they will have to get below the 53-player threshold by 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
In order not to get lost amid all the action, please make sure to bookmark and regularly visit our Patriots roster cuts tracker.
0 Comments