It was a quiet day for the Minnesota Vikings, as we now sit less than 24 hours away from the 53-man roster deadline. The team waived two players, reducing their roster to 77 and leaving them with 24 more moves to make before Tuesday afternoon at 3:00 PM Central time.
The team has announced that they have waived offensive tackle Leroy Watson IV and punter Oscar Chapman. The latter means that Ryan Wright has held on to the punting job. . .at least for now.
Watson was always going to have a bit of an uphill battle to make the roster with the Vikings’ depth at the tackle spot, but he could wind up on the practice squad.
Chapman’s situation is one that we touched on when we went over the rules governing the roster cutdown on Monday. We will have to see whether or not Chapman clears waivers, as he is subject to that like every other player with his level of experience that gets waived before final roster cutdowns. If he does go unclaimed, the Vikings can bring him back to the practice squad without him counting against the 16 practice squad spots because he’s a part of the International Player Partnership Program. That would mean that the Vikings could have a 17-man practice squad.
To the naked, untrained eye. . .and I qualify as such, because I’m not a punting expert or anything. . .it appeared that Chapman was actually punting the ball better than Wright was during the preseason. However, the Vikings also have their punter take responsibility for holding duties on extra points and field goals, and that’s an area where Chapman seemed to struggle a bit. If the Vikings manage to bring him back, that’s something he can certainly work on and, potentially, end up taking the job from Wright if he doesn’t improve on his performance from the past couple of seasons.
We’ll be continuing to track all of the moves the Vikings make as they work to reduce their roster to 53, but it looks like Monday is going to be the calm before the Tuesday storm.
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