A reminder that there are three cutdown dates this year

The way that roster cutdowns are going to be handled in the National Football League this season will be different for the Minnesota Vikings (and the 31 teams that we don’t care as much about). There are three different cutdown dates for us to track, but one of them is much larger than the other two.

Oh, and they’re on Tuesdays this year, so no sitting around on that final weekend before the regular season starts waiting for all the cuts to come through.

1. The first cutdown date is actually this coming Tuesday, 17 August, when teams will have to reduce their rosters from 90 players down to 85 by 3:00 PM Central time that day.
2. The Tuesday after that, 24 August, teams will have to cut their rosters down to 80 players, again by 3:00 PM Central time.
3. Last, but definitely not least, 31 August will be the big cutdown day around the league, as teams will have to have their rosters down to 53 by 3:00 PM Central time.

The day after all of the cuts are done, teams will have until 3:00 PM Central time to make waiver claims for players they want to attempt to get on their roster. Roster claims are still done in order of 2020 records from worst to first, so if the Vikings put a claim on a player, they only get him if the 13 teams above them on the list do not claim them as well.

Once all the waiver claims have been processed, teams can begin building their 16-player practice squads.

So, we will definitely have some roster moves between the time Saturday’s game finishes and 3:00 PM on Tuesday afternoon. Obviously, once the moves are announced, we’ll have them for you here.