Vikings waive three players to start their roster cuts

The Minnesota Vikings have started the process of whittling their roster down to 53 players, which they need to meet by Tuesday’s 3:00 PM Central deadline. On Saturday, they announced the waiving of three players, none of which come as a significant surprise.

The team has announced that they have waived center Cohl Cabral, defensive tackle Zeandae Johnson, and running back Ito Smith.

Smith was signed by the Vikings about a week ago and actually received quite a bit of work in last night’s preseason finale. He carried the ball 10 times for 27 yards and caught one pass for eight yards. The Vikings are already pretty deep at running back, and it seems like Smith was just around to lighten some of the load on the position during the preseason because of injuries.

Johnson was signed by the Vikings as an undrafted free agent during the post-draft signing blitz after his college career at California-Berkeley. He was always going to be a bit of a long shot to make the team, but he might be able to land a spot on the practice squad once the smoke clears and the dust settles on the final cuts.

Cabral was claimed by the Vikings off of waivers from the Houston Texans back in May. With the Vikings having traded for Mason Cole to potentially serve as a backup to Garrett Bradbury, it was going to be tough for Cabral to make the roster, and now he is one of the team’s first cuts.

This pushes the Vikings’ roster down to 76 players, so there are still 23 more moves for the purple to make before this Tuesday. We will be tracking all of the moves on our cutdown tracker, which you can find right here.