On Wednesday, NFL owners approved a proposal to allow teams to bring all 90 players on their offseason rosters to training camp. Amidst COVID concerns in 2020, many teams opened camp with an 80-man roster. This change allows an extra 300+ players on rosters to start camp. The owners also approved a return to progressive cutdown dates.
August 17: cutdown from 90 to 85
August 24: cutdown from 85 to 80
August 31: cutdown from 80 to 53.
The three dates are the Tuesdays after the first, second, and third preseason games. With only three preseason games, the final cuts are four days earlier than what had been the norm. In recent memory, the final cutdown was the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend. That was eight days before the first Sunday of the regular season. The new schedule puts the final cutdown 12 days before the first Sunday. Four days earlier may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things but every day counts during the build-up to a new NFL season.
While the progressive cutdown schedule gives bubble players two more days of extreme stress, cutting 37 players in a single day always felt excessive. Cutting 27 players in a single day still feels excessive but it’s a little better. The first few cuts are often fairly easy to make. Sometimes it’s best to do a little weeding of the roster after the early weeks of training camp.
Cutting players from an NFL roster and their NFL dreams is never a hoot but I’ve always thought that the progressive cutdown schedule a better way of doing things.
Perhaps more significantly than cutdowns, the NFL and NFLPA on Wednesday agreed to raise the 2022 salary cap by as much as 14%, to a maximum of $208.2. Revenue losses due to COVID issues dropped the 2021 salary cap to $182.5 million. That drop was a rough deal for many teams. Some rosters had to be gutted to become cap compliant. Most expected that the return to “normal” would be a more gradual thing. Now it appears that the salary cap will rise roughly as was expected before the pandemic. What a difference new TV deals and a 17th game make.
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