KC Chiefs: Important takeaways from roster cut deadline

If actions speak louder than words, then all we need to understand what a team thinks of a particular roster battle or player's stock is to watch the transaction wire. For the Kansas City Chiefs and every other NFL franchise, the deadline to scale down rosters to only 53 players—down from 90—came and went on Tuesday afternoon and it told us quite a bit about what the Chiefs learned in the preseason.

While the hype of Chiefs Kingdom matched the team's internal thoughts on some players, some other roster decisions by general manager Brett Veach and his staff took us by surprise. Then we also saw a couple of trades that surprised us in good ways and we approved of both.

The Chiefs and other teams will still make plenty of moves this week as they adjust the roster for injuries, waiver claims, and further trades. That means you shouldn't make any major judgments just yet. But we might have to wait until next week to see how the roster shakes out. Either way, here are some of the things we learned on Tuesday from watching the Chiefs roster cuts.

Justyn Ross clears next hurdle

For the first time since Andy Reid arrived in Kansas City, the Chiefs are going with seven wide receivers on the active roster. And that means Justyn Ross has officially gone from undrafted player to active wide receiver for the Chiefs.

At this point, Ross is the bigger winner than the Chiefs at this stage because a team cannot keep seven WRs active on a game day, so it remains to be seen how much of Ross we will see in a game or not. Or perhaps others on the depth chart will sit instead of Ross, but suffice it to say, we're not sure just yet how much we'll be talking about Ross's production in 2023. For now, however, Ross has cleared yet another hurdle and it speaks to his talent and dedication that he got here.