Seahawks final cuts: Putting players in "Buckets" to reach a 53-man roster

Seaside Bonus 8/21/22: If 43 players are locked in, who gets the final 10 spots? It's a numbers game

The Seattle Seahawks must go from an 80-man roster to a 53-man roster by next Tuesday and history dictates that Pete Carroll will be one of, if not the last head coach to announce his final decisions. Though the discussions for those controversial decisions over who makes it and who doesn’t is usually based on stand out players and guys who are doing well vs those who are not, the more realistic approach to projecting cuts is that it is a numbers game.

Whenever I get questions about why “player X” doesn’t make a final 53-man roster projection, my response is usually the question that Pete has to ask himself when he decides to keep a player he didn’t know he’d keep: “Who do I have to cut?”

You want to keep somebody? You have to cut somebody. That’s a much harder question to answer because usually fans want to keep more than 53 players, they just aren’t keeping count. Teams have to keep count. It’s a numbers game.

If the answer is “Well, easy, I would cut this (player I’m not a fan of)” and usually that player’s job has no relation to the job of the one you now want to keep. Within each individual position group, it is a numbers game.

So this week I went through the numbers, looking over the 80-man depth chart, the contract situation for each player, and the needs to come up with 43 who I feel are “locked into” the Seahawks eventual 53-man roster. That leaves 10 openings for 37 players, but more realistically—because it’s a numbers game—the number of players I have “on the bubble” is 22.

That’s 22 players for 10 roster spots. Then it’s a matter of what needs the team doesn’t have filled with the other 43 and filling in those gaps with the 22 players on the bubble. And because it is a numbers game and I’m basing my roster decisions on that instead of only focusing on camp performances, I believe this is a projection that has unique value compared to all the 53-man roster projections.

I said I would not do a 53-man projection this year, so rather than go against my word and do one, I will instead taking a different approach. While secretly, probably, going against my rule of not doing one.

These are the players who I believe are guaranteed their spot on the Week 1 roster, those who are not going to make it, and those on the bubble fighting to increase their value in the NFL over the next seven days.

This is a Seaside Bonus article for “Regular Joes” and you might notice that the regular free edition is not out yet. Yes, I am doing things backwards today—today’s episode of Seaside Joe will be a training camp update: Which you can read right here, all about Drew Lock’s return and the ascension of Mike Jackson at corner.

We are over 1,000 subscribers! In a world inundated with subscriber counts in the tens of millions, I know that may not seem like a lot. In the newsletter space on a website that remains obscure in the social media world, I know how fortunate I am to reach that many people who want to share this season of the Seahawks with me and the Seasider community and I’m grateful for your support.

Onto the 80-man roster and who is safe, who isn’t, and who is on the bubble. I’ve broken it down into those who are “Locked In” based on their contract, “Locked In” based on draft status, “Locked In” based on need, and those who are “On the Bubble” for those same reasons, plus 15 players who I believe can best hope to make the practice squad.