Pats Pulpit
After promptly making 14 cuts following their preseason finale, the New England Patriots remained comparatively quiet on Saturday and Sunday. Only one player was removed from the active roster over the weekend: guard Layden Robinson, a fourth-round draft pick in 2024, was waived with an injury designation.
Let’s assess what the move means for the team.
Robinson was one of the Patriots’ few positive surprises of the 2024 season. The 103rd selection in the draft ended up starting 11 games between his stints at left and right guard, playing a combined 603 offensive snaps (55.2%) on the year.
Even though he experienced some rookie growing pains in what was an overall underwhelming offense, the arrow appeared to be pointing in the right direction. In the eyes of new head coach Mike Vrabel and company, however, it was not — a surprising development when looking back at his 2024 progression, but not necessarily as far as his spring and summer are concerned.
Robinson, after all, ran almost exclusively with the backups during offseason workouts and training camp. With the team seemingly preferring other options, a parting of the ways was always considered the likeliest outcome.
Now, it has happened — at least to a degree: while the Patriots do expose Robinson to the waiver wire, he will revert to their injured reserve list if going unclaimed.
Robinson heading to injured reserve is the likely outcome. There is no guarantee he will remain there through the season, though: he is ineligible to be reactivated further down the line, but the fact he was waived beforehand speaks a clear language about his long-term job security.
For now, however, the 24-year-old is set to become the eighth Patriot already moved to IR this year:
Like Robinson, the other players on the injured reserve list are also ineligible to be activated to the 53-man roster this season. For that to happen, a player needs to either be sent there in-season or be one of a maximum of two placed on IR on cutdown day itself (i.e. Tuesday, Aug. 26).
Robinson going from the active roster to injured reserve, will reduce his impact on the Patriots’ salary cap. While originally carrying a cap number of $1.17 million, it will now be significant less: his cap impact while on IR is $728,018, a combination of his fully-guaranteed signing bonus proration for the 2025 season ($213k) and his split salary ($515k).
The remainder of his $426,036 signing bonus, meanwhile, hit the Patriots’ 2026 books as dead cap.
With Robinson no longer on the active team, a look at our up-to-date roster shows that the Patriots have eight interior offensive linemen remaining:
**Interior offensive line...
