With the preseason winding down this weekend, the NFL’s roster cutdown day—Sunday, Aug. 30 at 3 p.m. PT—is looming. That means the Las Vegas Raiders and the 31 other teams in the league will have to make decisions on which players to keep and let go. But with the Raiders being longshots to win the Super Bowl, +15,000 on FanDuel Sportsbook, cutdown day doesn’t mean Las Vegas’ roster is finalized before the season opener against the Miami Dolphins.
The Silver and Black are in rebuilding mode and could afford to add extra young talent to build for the future, especially at defensive tackle and wide receiver. Head coach Klint Kubiak even called out his wideouts after the preseason game against the Houston Texans, suggesting the Raiders could be looking for more pass-catchers to pair with rookie quarterback Fernando Mendoza for the long haul.
That’s where the NFL’s waiver wire comes in post-cutdown day.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see Kubiak and general manager John Spytek take a long look at players who didn’t make another club’s 53-man roster but could help in Vegas. The organization’s decision-makers were different, but that’s how the Raiders acquired defensive tackle Jonah Laulu in 2024, who has started 22 games since getting waived by the Indianapolis Colts at the end of training camp two years ago.
But how does the waiver wire work, and how can the Raiders add players to the roster from it? Let’s dive in!
Who’s Eligible?
Any player who is cut and has less than four years of experience in the league, meaning they’ve been on a 53-man roster, physically unable to perform (PUP) list, or injured reserve (IR) for at least six games in four different seasons. That touches on why the Raiders are expected to scrounge the waiver wire on Sunday; they’re rebuilding, and every player who gets waived is young with three or fewer years of experience.
Players with four or more years of experience aren’t subject to waivers if they get cut and just become free agents. To clarify, a player who remains on PUP, the Non-Football Injury (NFI) list, is on any sort of reserve list after cutdown day, or is put on IR ahead of cutdown day, is not available for another team to claim them. Those players are still under contract with their current clubs; they just aren’t on the active roster.
This is somewhat besides the point since it doesn’t apply to the post-cutdown day waiver wire, but after the trade deadline (Nov. 10), every player who gets released is subject to waivers regardless of how much experience they have. So, the rules will change a bit later in the season.
How do Raiders add players via waivers?
When teams submit their 53-man rosters to the NFL, they also include a list of the players who are waived or released. That creates the “waiver wire”, which is distributed to the rest of the teams and is publicly available. General managers and head coaches who are interested in adding players look over the list and see if there’s anyone that piques their interest.
If there is someone the GM and head coach want to add, they put in a claim for said player within about 24 hours of cutdown day. The timeline might be closer to 20 or 21 hours depending on the exact time of the two deadlines, but it’s roughly a day. So, a player gets cut on Sunday, another team puts in a claim for the player on Monday, and the player is officially on a new team’s roster by Tuesday.
Once all of the waiver claims are submitted, if two clubs want to claim the same player, the team that finished with the worse record last year/was higher on the draft order (removing trades) in April gets the player. That means the Raiders are in a pretty good spot with the waiver wire this year because they had the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NFL draft and, thus, will have waiver priority over any other team.
Also, the waiver wire/order isn’t like fantasy football where you have to submit a priority list if you want to add multiple players and hope that no one else in your league put in a claim for your second player. If the Raiders want to add five players on waivers, they get all five since they have priority over every team. However, they would have to cut five other guys by the following day to get back down to a 53-man roster.
Below is the waiver order to begin the 2026 season:
After three weeks, the order changes week-to-week to reflect the current NFL standings.
What happens after player gets claimed?
This one is pretty simple. Once a player gets claimed, he’s on the 53-man roster of the team that won the claim for him, and that team absorbs his current contract. Additionally, the club will have to waive or release another player to make room for the waiver claim, and the waiver process starts all over again if they have less than four years of service. It’s just on a much smaller scale since every team isn’t making roughly 37 transactions/cuts on the same day.
What happens if player clears waivers?
If a player gets cut and doesn’t get claimed on the waiver wire or “clears waivers”, they become a free agent and are eligible to sign with any team, including the one that just cut them. Typically, said players will sign practice squad contracts, though. The only exception would be if the player is on an expensive contract and other teams are interested in having him on the 53-man roster but not at his current price tag. However, that’s pretty rare. Even 2021 first-round pick Alex Leatherwood was claimed off waivers when the Raiders cut him in 2022.
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