Daily Norseman
Now that the Minnesota Vikings have started making moves to get their roster down to 53 players before the 3:00 PM Central Tuesday deadline, we want to take an opportunity to go over some of the rules that the Vikings (and the other 31 NFL teams that don’t matter as much) have to follow when getting their rosters reduced. Hopefully, this can alleviate any confusion that anyone might have when it comes to certain moves.
Over the next couple of days, you’ll hear about players getting both waived and released by their teams. There is a difference between the two transactions, and it affects where those players may, eventually, find themselves.
Any player with less than four accrued seasons of experience will be waived by their team. That means that they are subject to the league’s waiver process, where teams with worse records have the ability to get those players first.
Right now, and through the first three weeks of the 2025 regular season, the waiver priority order mirrors the selection order from the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft. That means the Tennessee Titans occupy the #1 spot on the waiver priority list. Basically, if a team waives a player and the Titans want him, they get him.
The Vikings, on the other hand, sit at #24 on the waiver priority list. So, if the Vikings want to put a waiver claim in on a player, they need to hope that none of the 23 teams on the list ahead of them claim that same player, or else they’re out of luck.
If a player has four or more seasons of accrued experience, on the other hand, they get released. That means that they immediately become a free agent and can sign with any other team that makes them an offer. So when the Vikings terminated Brett Rypien’s contract, he immediately became a free agent.
Those rules mean that the following players would be subject to waivers if they were let go by the team:
