With the NFL season upon us, it brings up multiple questions as to how transactions work within the league, specifically, the waiver wire.
The NFL season is back in full swing, and with that comes transactional moves made between teams or organizations and players to sign deals. Trades will be negotiated between teams, free agents will be signed, and players will get cut-nothing out of the ordinary. Sometimes, instead of getting cut, players get waived, and that can sometimes confuse general audiences on what the difference is between getting cut and being waived. If they are basically the same thing, then why use different terms? Because they are not the same thing. The difference is simple enough, and the way the wire works comes down to a priority-based order.
First, let’s start off with how being waived works in the NFL and how it is different from a straight-up release. The big thing with these transactions is determined by how long a player has been in the league. The terms utilized by the league are vested and non-vested veterans. A vested veteran is a player who has accrued four or more years in the National Football League. In NFL terms, accrued means that you have to have played six or more games in a season while on a full-pay status. Those players, when released, get sent straight to free agency and are allowed to sign with whomever they choose. The established veteran player is free to decide where they would like to go play next when they are released.
A non-vested veteran player is someone with less than four accrued years of time in the National Football League. When they are released, that is when the term waived comes into play. These players’ contracts are not immediately terminated as they get sent to the waiver wire, where they can be claimed by other NFL teams. The window for a player to be claimed is typically 24 hours, and once that window passes, they are able to become a free agent and sign with any team of their choosing. When a player does not clear waivers and is claimed by another team, then his current contract is picked up by said team. However, after the trade deadline, even vested veterans have to go through the waiver process.
The question now becomes: how does priority work when putting in waiver claims in the NFL? When a player is claimed off of waivers, they go to the team higher in the order of priority, just like a claim would go through playing fantasy football. For the first three weeks of the season, the priority order belongs to the NFL draft order from the previous years. For instance, the top three teams with priority as of the writing of this article would be the Raiders first, then the Jets, and then the Cardinals. From week four and on, the waiver order reverts to the worst records in the league and the updated standings as the season goes along. For example, the four 0-3 teams, the Chargers, Buccaneers, Texans, and Dolphins, would be the four teams at the top of the priority claims if it were based on standings. Those teams will have to wait until Tuesday, October 6, to see if they would still fall at the top of the list. Unlike fantasy football, however, a team can claim as many players as they want on the waiver wire and not lose priority. It is strictly standings based and nothing else affects that.
Most times when you hear the term waived, it is mostly a strategic move for an NFL team to build up its practice squad. It is the idea that an NFL team likes a young player and wants to keep them around but they have no room left on the roster. Then, they waive the player, hope he clears waivers, and they sign him back to the practice squad immediately. It is the thing that normally happens when NFL players get waived. It is a bet that NFL teams are willing to make in hopes of constructing a solid practice squad of depth players.
The waiver wire can be confusing at some points, but it is just a matter of youth versus veterans and claiming a contract versus signing a new one. Priority is determined by record and is not affected by the amount of players one team adds from the waiver wire. Those are the simple beats to help the casual fan better understand the inner machinations of the NFL waiver wire.
