The NFL Preseason wraps up this Thursday, August 29th, with the final week four games. All NFL games will take place on Thursday night.
NFL teams will begin trimming their rosters soon after. This is known as the NFL cutdown day.
NFL coaches work overnight, and by Friday morning, will begin announcing player cuts. NFL teams need to trim their roster down to 53 players. Teams are allowed to keep ten practice squad players that don’t count towards the 53. They also have the option of putting injured players on IR.
Waiting in the wings amid all the chaos will be the XFL. They plan to fill the bulk of their draft pool with NFL players looking for work.
Field Yates from ESPN breaks it down;
- NFL Rosters must be reduced to 53 players by Saturday at 4 pm EST
- Players with four or more accrued seasons that are cut will be placed on waivers
- NFL teams can claim them off of waivers. The waiver order is similar to the NFL draft order
- Any player teams place on IR before the 4 pm deadline will be out for the entire 2019 season.
Even though a player is cut, the XFL would wait before the player clears waivers. Technically the XFL doesn’t have too, but the players would want to see if they get picked up by another NFL squad before accepting an XFL invite.
After the dust settles by Labor day, you can start to see more Oliver Luck Commissioner invites going out. The XFL has the month of September to lock in their other tier 1 quarterbacks and fill the XFL draft pool with around 800 players. The XFL draft is set to take place in mid-October. All tier 1 QB’s should be in place before the XFL draft.
Continue to check our invite player draft tracker for the latest XFL Commissioner invites.
