Roster cutdown is the most hectic and emotionally fraught day of the Seattle Seahawks' football season. Seventeen hundred athletes find work in their chosen field for another year. More than one thousand of their colleagues are told they do not have a job. Many of those in the second group will get another chance, sometimes within hours of their first rejection.
But you never know. Athletes who compete at the highest levels of sport all understand that it could end in a flash. Cutdown day is one of those flashpoints.
Many of the 53 players who got good news from the Seahawks on Tuesday knew they were in no real danger.