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The claiming period for players waived during final cuts on Saturday is fairly short: Players placed on waivers during the final roster cuts can only be claimed until 12:00 noon ET on Sunday. After that, starting at 1:00 pm ET, the Cowboys, and every other NFL team, can begin signing up to 10 players to their practice squad, and the hope is that they’ll be able to sign all the players they have earmarked for a slot on their practice squad.
Vested veterans (with four years of pension credit) are are not waived but are released. They immediately become free agents, are not subject to the waiver system, and can sign with any team as soon as they want.
But not all the players the Cowboys waived or released during final cuts will be claimed or signed by another team, or will they? Here is a non-exhaustive list of recently cut players who could garner some interest:
- WR Cedrick Wilson looked like a roster lock for a while, but then the Cowboys went with five wide receivers and he was the odd man out.
- RB Jordan Chunn had been expected by some to beat out Alfred Morris. That didn’t happen.
- DT Daniel Wise was a UDFA that got caught up in the numbers game at defensive tackle. In most previous years, he’d have likely made the Cowboys roster, but this year is unlike any in recent memory - at least on the defensive line.
- CB Donovan Olumba got a lot of hype during preseason, but it wasn’t enough for the Cowboys to keep him on the 53-man roster.
- CB Mike Jackson (5th round) and RB Mike Weber (7th) at least have their draft pedigree going for them. Will it be enough for them to be claimed by another team?
Or is the imagined interest in these players just a figment of Cowboys fan imagination? Do we as Cowboys fans significantly overrate the attractiveness of our own roster cuts? The evidence suggests we do:
We have previously asked readers here on Blogging The Boys the same question we’re asking today, which players are most likely to be claimed by another team.
- In 2015, Ben Gardner won the poll in a landslide, garnering 79% of the 4,539 votes, but nobody signed him off the waiver wire. The Chargers picked him up in November of that year, but he never made it past their practice squad.
- In 2017, the same question led to a slightly more balanced poll result. CB Marquez White led the poll with 36% of the 4,648 votes cast. Nobody claimed White, and the Cowboys were able to sign him to their practice squad without issue. He was eventually released and hasn’t been signed by an NFL team since.
- Last year, DE Charles Tapper led the poll with 35% of the 6,247 votes cast (in fairness, I had excluded Dan Bailey from the poll as he would have been the obvious choice). Tapper was signed to the Cowboys practice squad a day after being cut, only to be released two days later. He signed a reserve/future contract with the Jets in January, but was waived with a non-football injury designation in May and has been a free agent since.
Take the poll and let us know who you think is the player most likely to get picked up by another team tomorrow.
Poll
Which players are most likely to be claimed by another team?
This poll is closed
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40%
WR Cedrick Wilson
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3%
RB Jordan Chunn
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35%
DT Daniel Wise
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14%
CB Donovan Olumba
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4%
CB Mike Jackson
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2%
RB Mike Weber