A year ago this coming week, across the 32 camps where NFL teams planned their assault on the regular-season schedule, it was a nervous time for many football players who were about to become former football players.
The NFL’s first cutdown day, reducing the roster from the training-camp limit of 90 to 75, was always scheduled for the Tuesday after the third preseason game – deletions that would provide those unlucky 480 men with “a chance to get on with their life’s work,” as Buddy Ryan liked to say.
The next cutdown, to the active roster size of 53, would arrive on the Sunday after the fourth exhibition, and that was where the real meat was trimmed.