By 3:00 p.m. PT on Sunday, August 30, the Las Vegas Raiders' roster will look different. After rolling with 91 players for the majority of the offseason, John Spytek and the front office will collaborate with Klint Kubiak and the coaching staff to hack this roster all the way down to just 53 players.
Roster cutdown day, in a lot ways, helps a team trim the fat and spend more time focusing on the players who will be out there on Sundays. But a team like the Raiders that is still early in the stages of a rebuild and looking to add talent has an opportunity to pounce on players who become available.
This process can be a bit complicated, so let's dive into everything that this day and the coming days will entail. And let's make sure everyone understands what an advantage it is for the Silver and Black to be No. 1 in the waiver wire order for this tentpole event on the NFL calendar.
How do the NFL waiver wire and roster cutdown day work?
The concept of roster cutdown day is simple: NFL teams have a 90ish-man offseason roster and have to whittle it down to 53 before the regular season. There are a number of ways that a team can get down to that number, though, and many cases are different.
For players with five or more accrued seasons, if a team does not want to keep them on the 53-man roster, then they will simply be released. This means that their contracts are terminated and they are immediately free to sign with another team and would have to reach a new deal with said team.
If a team wants to get rid of a player who has accrued four or fewer seasons, then those players will head to the waiver wire. There, other NFL teams can try to claim them within 24 hours, and if they do, that team would acquire the player and pick up the contract that they had with their previous team.
Should a player not get claimed during this period (a vast majority don't), then they "clear waivers" and become a free agent. Again, that means that a player's contract is terminated and they are free to sign anywhere in the league that they'd like on a new deal.
Through the end of Week 3, the NFL waiver order will be determined by the inverse of the standings from the 2025 NFL season. Effectively, the order will be what it was during the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft, trades notwithstanding.
Where are the Raiders in the NFL waiver order?
Of course, this means that the Raiders have the first spot in the NFL waiver order both during roster cutdowns and every day until after the third week of the season. That is a major advantage for Las Vegas, as they'll get first dibs on every player to hit waivers during this timeframe.
Let's clear up some misconceptions about how they can use this favorable position.
Teams can claim as many players as they'd like, so long as they have the space on the 53-man team to accommodate them. The Raiders could claim 53 new players and start fresh if they wanted, and no other team would be able to get in their way; Las Vegas has first choice on everyone available.
So, if Spytek and Kubiak see a wide receiver, a defensive tackle, a right tackle, a safety and a tight end that they like, they can claim all of them, and that's that. It's not like the Raiders have one claim to use at the top and then they revert to the end of the order or suddenly aren't No. 1 on waivers anymore.
Again, just to be clear: Las Vegas has the first opportunity to claim as many players as it would like every single day until after Week 3.
Every year, promising players are waived by teams with roster crunches at certain positions with a surplus. The Raiders could massively benefit from this in the coming days and weeks as they sit atop the waiver order and can get their hands on a young pro before anyone else has the chance.
How does the injured reserve (IR) work at cutdown day?
Some players, if their injury is bad enough, will be placed on the season-ending injured reserve. This can happen at any time. That means that a player will not be eligible to return at any point during the 2026 NFL season, but they remain on the Raiders' roster throughout the campaign.
Other players may be waived with an injury designation, and if they clear waivers, then they will revert to the IR in Las Vegas and stay on the team. Another route for these players is to come to an injury settlement with the team, which means they'd be off the roster but get a portion of their salary paid.
In some unique cases, a player can be designated for short-term IR, which means that they cannot play in the first four games of the season. New rules indicate, however, that a team can designate two such players for this, and they will not count toward the initial 53-man roster, unlike in the past.
For the Raiders, this could mean a player like Dont'e Thornton Jr. or even Ashton Jeanty could be put on the shelf for this long. After two games, these players would have their 21-day practice windows opened, angling them for an immediate return in Week 5.
Hopefully, a player like Keyron Crawford won't miss the whole season with the ankle injury that he suffered in the preseason finale. But Raider Nation should get a lot of clarity on where things stand, both injury-wise and from an overall roster perspective, in the coming days.
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