What to expect from the Kansas City Chiefs on cutdown weekend
By Scott Loring
After the Saturday cutdown deadline, all released players are immediately placed on waivers and can be claimed by any other team for their 53-man rosters. Assuming the Chiefs do indeed plan on placing Speaks on IR, that means they will have a plan in place to add at least one player (either bring back one they cut, or bring in another team’s cast-off). Needless to say, Saturday evening and Sunday morning will be a busy time for GM Brett Veach and his entire staff.
One interesting wrinkle for the Chiefs: What about Morris Claiborne? The newly-signed cornerback is suspended for the first four games of 2019, so he will not need to be placed on the 53-man roster to begin the season. Claiborne will be in limbo until Week 5, when the Chiefs will need to make a corresponding transaction in order to promote him to the active roster before their Sunday night tilt with the Colts.
On Sunday at 12:00 p.m. CST, the waiver period expires and teams can add players to their Practice Squad. The Practice Squad consists of ten players who are employed by the team but are not eligible to play in games. These players are eligible to be plucked by other teams, but only if they are promoted to their 53-man roster. One primary role of the practice squad is to serve as the scout team for the upcoming week and emulate the play of the next opponent.
In 2017, the Carolina Panthers had a great camp competition between veteran kicker Graham Gano and rookie Harrison Butker, and in the end, the Panthers tried to stash Butker on their practice squad. When then-Chiefs kicker Cairo Santos injured his groin early in the season, the Chiefs poached Butker, and the rest is history.
It’s a fine art to discern which players are Practice Squad candidates and which are too valuable to leave exposed to the other 31 teams. Veach and Reid have assembled one of the deepest collections of talent in recent memory.
There are some difficult decisions to be made, and there will certainly be some players wedged out of Kansas City who find themselves on another team’s roster when the dust settles.