Cutdown Days

These days suck. More than 1,100 players will be released from their NFL dreams this week.

All NFL teams have to trim their rosters to 75 players players by today. They have to trim another 22 players by Saturday at 4pm ET to get to the final roster size of 53. While today is cutdown day, teams have been swinging the ax since Saturday night. The Minnesota Vikings released the following 13 players yesterday:

Brandon Bishop S
Pierce Burton T
Derek Cox CB
Kamar Jorden WR
Andy Kruse WR
Erik Lora WR
Kevin Murphy T
Kheeston Randall DT
Tyler Scott DE
Jake Snyder DE
Kory Sperry TE
Robert Steeples CB
Ty Walker WR

The Vikings also waived safety Mistral Raymond with an injury settlement. Kruse may have also received an injury settlement. The Vikings released tight end Mike Higgins today to get to the roster limit of 75. All this means is that 15 football players that were part of the Minnesota Vikings two days ago are no longer part of the Minnesota Vikings. The same sad events are taking place in 31 other cities. As many as 320 of the players released this week could be brought back as members of the expanded practice squads of NFL teams. So, the NFL dreams of some of these players could still be alive. Two of the receivers with a real fine shot at making the Vikings 53-man roster, Adam Thielen and Rodney Smith, spent all of last season on the practice squad. Being released this week could just be a bump in the road.

Derek Cox is the one player that was released that is something of a surprise. He was terrific with the Jacksonville Jaguars two years ago. He was terrible with the San Diego Chargers last year. He was something of a wildcard. He has the size and talent to be an impact corner and he seemed to be playing well in the preseason games. Raymond has started some games for the Vikings but safety has become a crowded position and he was starting to fall behind.

There haven't been too many notable veteran cuts across the league, so far, but here are a few:

New England Patriots:
Tommy Kelly DT
Will Smith DE

Chicago Bears
Adrian Wilson S

Arizona Cardinals
Max Starks T
Jay Feely

This is a difficult week for a lot of football players.