NEWSLETTER
Rookies started reporting to team facilities across the NFL on Tuesday. And with training camp scheduled to open in one week, others will soon follow.
However, there will be fewer faces in camp than teams are accustomed to seeing.
News from NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport:
In a call with players today, NFLPA leadership said roster sizes are expected to be 80 to start camp, source said. Not a surprise, GMs are working under this assumption.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 21, 2020
Trimming rosters to 80 lops 10 players off rosters before camp opens. That could mean as many as 320 free agents could be hitting the open market soon.
The Chicago Bears are among the the teams with a full 90-player roster. This means GM Ryan Pace and Head Coach Matt Nagy have tough decisions to make to get down to 80. And while I’m sure fans could offer up any number of players they would like to see cut, the business of actually doing so isn’t easy. Perhaps this set of roster decisions will be as simple as cutting the 10 undrafted free agents the team signed in late April. Then again, a few UDFAs tend to make their way onto the roster at some point or another. So maybe it’s not as straight-forward as that.
Earlier in July, there was talk that team rosters could be cut to all the way to 75. So it’s not as if this news comes as a complete surprise. Even though roster cuts have been on the horizon for some time, the reality is that some dreams of making an NFL roster will be sidetracked in the coming week. Then again, players who are cut now should stay alert for teams who will be interested in them at later this summer.
