For years, I’ve been reading comments and occasional articles about the NFL that pomote the idea that every player on the roster should be active on game day. “Just let everyone play” is the usual argument. Critics of the inactive list think of it as taking players away, but proponents of the current rules say that the inactive lists and the practice squad are actually methods of roster expansion designed to increase roster flexibility and depth while maintaining reasonable competitive balance.
The real argument probably shouldn’t be about whether the inactive list is good or evil, but what the “right” number is for the list of active players on game-day. For several years now, the number has been 46; under the new CBA, starting this season, each team has the opportunity to have up to 48 players active on game day.
To make it easier to focus on the reasoning behind the game-day inactive list, I’d like to take the discussion away from the question of whether 46 (or 48) players is enough, and even whether the inactive list is the right way to approach the issue of roster management in the NFL. Let’s instead, go through an imagined scenario — a thought process to see where the inactive list originated, and why we have it today.
First, an acknowledgement of the unlimited roster size proponents
In discussions of roster size, some fans argue that the salary cap is the only limit that is needed. These fans argue that each team should be able to carry as many (or as few) players as they want, so long as they meet the demands of the salary cap. One team might choose to take the field every week on Sunday/Monday/Thursday with just 40 players, but paying a much bigger slice of the salary cap pie to a few uber-talented superstars, while another might take the view that 55 lower paid players who can specialize and stay fresh all game provides the best opportunity to win. Competitive balance is maintained by the salary cap without the need for roster size restrictions.
Personally, I don’t object to this point of view, but I’ve never seen it seriously discussed as an option for the NFL. So, while I acknowledge that the idea has merit, it won’t really form part of the discussion in this article, which is focusing on the system the NFL has used for more than three decades; that is, a roster combination of active and inactive players on game day.
Step One in our thought experiment - expand the game day roster significantly
The biggest argument against the inactive list is that the remaining list of active players is too restrictive, and it doesn’t always leave teams with enough available backups to cover multiple injuries on game day.
As a first step, I’m going to wave my magic wand and expand game-day rosters significantly. I have arbitrarily chosen 60 players as the magic number for NFL game day active rosters because I think most people would agree that this should sufficiently cover most NFL teams against injury in any given week.
Abracadabra...poof! Now, every team in the league can have 60 players active on game day. It’s a huge jump from 46 or 48 players, and now every team should be deep enough to survive game day injuries.
Thanks to my magic wand, every team in my thought experiment league has 60 guys and all of them can play every week.
Step two - Do we have a competitive imbalance?
It’s Week 6 of the thought experiment season, and the Jets are playing the Bengals. Injuries have hit hard on the team from NY. They’ve got two sprained ankles, two hamstring injuries, one receiver with turf-toe, a lineman with a few broken finger-bones, and a running back with mononucleosis. The game-day roster is down to 53 players.
Cincinnati, meanwhile, has had a mostly injury-free season. They’ve got one wide receiver out with a sprained AC joint, but the other 59 are healthy.
So, the Bengals have a 6-man advantage on the Jets.
Some fans would say that doesn’t matter; just play the game. Others would argue that this creates an unfair competitive advantage for the AFC North team, and a relative disadvantage for the AFC East team.
Of course, there is one option available to the Jets — they could put some or all of the players on IR and replace them on the roster with healthy players. The downside of that is that a player who goes on injured reserve is out for the rest of the season. It’s Week 6, and the injured Jets players should all be ready to play again in a couple of weeks, so the coach doesn’t want to move them to injured reserve.
This is a lousy choice for the Jets coach — play this week disadvantaged by his limited number of healthy players on the roster, or move players to IR, losing them for the season and replacing them with (probably) inferior players.
Step 3 - let’s try to restore some of the competitive balance
The league decides that it’s not good to have the situation seen in the Jets - Bengals game, so they decide on a rule change in the off-season. Under the new rule, each team can add 8 more players to its roster, bringing the total to 68 players, but each week, only 60 can be active on game day. Eight players have to sit out the game.
The eight inactives are designed to allow the coach to give players with relatively minor injuries a week (or more) off to rest and recover, while still keeping them on the roster (meaning that they don’t have to end their seasons by being placed on IR). If the team doesn’t have eight injured players, then they still benefit by having 8 extra players to develop for the future or to be available “just in case” they are needed at the end of the year. Under this rule, the Jets and Bengals each still field 60 player, but the Jets sit their 7 injured guys + one other, while the Bengals sit one injured player + 7 others.
Seen as the result of this line of thinking, the inactive list isn’t a roster reduction, but an expansion.
The inactive list has been a part of roster expansions throughout the history of the NFL
My short thought process is a simplified version of the complex process of rule changes that have comprised the evolution of roster sizes in the NFL for the past century. The trend across the 101-year history of the NFL has been roster expansion, though there have been short-term roster reductions at times.
In the 1920s, roster sizes fluctuated between 16 and 18 players.
For most of the 1940s rosters were between 33 and 35 players.
For a decade, from ‘64 to ‘73, teams comprised 40 players.
Since 1978, 45 or 46 players has been the standard roster size, with roster expansion taking place mostly via the inactive list, practice squads and changes to IR rules.
People think of the inactive list as limiting the roster but if you think back to its reason for being, the inactive list was used to expand the roster and allow teams to minimize movement on and off of the injured reserve list.
When I was a kid, the games roster was 40 players. If you weren’t one of those players, you were on IR our you weren’t on a roster.
Part of competitive balance is maintaining limited rosters. The NFL allowed teams, via the inactive list, to add more players to the roster, but not to put them all in the field on game day. This helps maintain competitive balance, allows teams to carry a player on the roster who has a short term injury without penalty, and provides the opportunity to carry a player or two in the roster who might be PS quality at the moment, without risk of that player getting poached by another team.
Obviously, the establishment and expansion of the Practice Squad system in recent years has been a second step with some of the same goals that also aims to help make up for the lack of a developmental league for the NFL. With the new CBA, the line between the 53-man roster and the practice squad is getting burred.
Provisions in the new CBA that allow teams to temporarily “elevate” one or two practice squad players to the active roster weekly (with a limit of two games per PS player per season) are designed to move the league a half-step toward roster expansion while retaining the edifices built over the past couple of decades. For example, from 1991 to 2011, the NFL had a rule that allowed “emergency” QBs. At the time, the math was 53 players – 8 inactive (if one was an emergency QB who could only play if the other 2 QBs were injured) = 45 active. In 2011, they simply expanded the active game day roster to 46 players and got rid of the emergency QB rule. I suspect we’ll see a similar transition to a larger roster in 2030 when these new PS elevation rules are scrapped in favor of something more elegant.
The NFL has grudgingly expanded rosters throughout its history in response to increasing specialization and situational substitution, but it’s a slow process, and I think it should be. We’ve seen in recent years how rule changes aren’t always for the best, and no rule is more fundamental than roster size.
Photo by Sporting News via Getty Images/Sporting News via Getty Images via Getty Images
Remember that Sammy Baugh, possibly the greatest player in franchise history, played QB/tailback, DB and Punter. In the days of 2 or 3-way players who were on the field every down, a 40-man roster would have seemed unnecessary, as half the team would never have gotten in the field.
From 1973 to 1993, the NFL tinkered almost annually with roster sizes, IR rules, inactive lists, taxi squads, developmental squads and practice squads, looking for the right balance. It finally settled on the inactive list as an alternative to season-ending IR, and I like that it adds 7 (or now 8 or 9) players to the roster, because it really is roster addition, and not subtraction. In combination with the Practice Squad and more liberal IR rules, it provides teams with a fair amount of roster flexibility, while still providing a strong measure of competitive balance.
The inactive list — especially when it was expanded from 2 players to 8 in conjunction with making IR a season-ending move in 1993 — provides teams with expanded rosters and the ability to better manage short-term injuries.
My final thought here is that Inactive lists are good for players — even one of the most vocal advocates for players’ rights, Geoff Schwartz, believes it:
And no, you can’t just dress everyone who’s healthy that week. It would lead to uneven gameday size, and the team with more healthy players would have a huge advantage.
I like the current program of 53 players with 7 inactives
(53 votes)
26%
All 53 should be active every week
(58 votes)
9%
Salary cap should be the only limiting factor — let each team decide the size of its roster independently
(20 votes)
33%
Roster size should be bigger, maybe as many as 65 players. The important part is that teams should always have enough guys available to replace injured players during a game.
Though 53 players are on the roster, before each NFL game seven or eight, depending on whether the team has a third quarterback, must be declared inactive. The inactives get full pay but watch from the sidelines.
Eight players have to sit out the game. The eight inactives are designed to allow the coach to give players with relatively minor injuries a week (or more) off to rest and recover, while still keeping them on the roster (meaning that they don't have to end their seasons by being placed on IR).
NFL teams are allowed 53 players on their roster but only 46 can suit up for a game since the active roster rules were changed in 2011. Another recent change was the decision to increase practice squads from 10 players to 16.
Now, the minimum salary relies on how many years of service an NFL player has, and is imposed by the CBA. So if a player kicked off his rookie season in 2021, he's bound to make a minimum of $660,000. Once a player hits four years in the league, his minimum salary becomes $900,000.
A disaster draft or contingency draft is a disaster recovery plan developed by professional sports leagues to rebuild a team's roster if many players are disabled or killed.
The winning team can typically present any number of rings to whomever they choose, including usually, but not limited to: players (active roster, inactive roster, or injured reserve), coaches, trainers, executives, personnel, and general staff.
The required number of quarterbacks on a roster to start a game is two, one starting quarterback and a backup quarterback. Most NFL teams keep two quarterbacks on their rosters. However, some teams like to keep three quarterbacks on the roster during the season in case of injury.
inactive, idle, inert, passive, supine mean not engaged in work or activity. inactive applies to anyone or anything not in action or in operation or at work. on inactive status as an astronaut. inactive accounts. idle applies to persons that are not busy or occupied or to their powers or their implements.
Any rankings cited in this column come from our ESPN Fantasy staff ranks. Official Sunday inactives should begin coming in approximately 90 minutes prior to the scheduled kickoff times, including around 11:30 a.m. ET for the early games and 2:30 p.m. ET for the late games.
Players are permitted to stay with the team and attend games, though players may leave the team to focus on treatment, to avoid traveling with the team on a road trip, or for short term minor league rehabilitation assignments to prepare for their return to the active roster.
One might assume that teams have a new uniform for every game, and they do use special uniforms, like historic throwback uniforms, for special games. The reality is, however, they wear the same uniforms, either a home or away version, most games.
Nowadays, the shirts are only ever worn once because the club get so many requests from charities for shirts to be donated. Some players keep their shirts, some swap them with opponents and some donate them via the club.
Antonio Brown just took jersey and gear off and threw it into crowd. Celebrating and ran to the locker room. No idea what is going on. The media could not be played.
The schedule makers create thousands of possible schedules before picking the final version. The NFL uses a rotation system to make sure each team plays one another at least once every four years. Flexible scheduling helps showcase the best late-season matchups to the largest audiences.
When an NFL player retires, all of the dead money on their contract counts against the current year's salary cap. As far as the salary cap goes, player retirement is treated the same as if a player were cut or traded by the team.
This set piece highlights all the reasons as to why NFL stars don't offload in their sport. The simple answer is that they haven't been coached to catch and pass the ball at speed.
What NFL position has the lowest average salary? At the bottom of the salary leaderboard is special teams, averaging $2.775 million. Among the special teams contingency, kickers consistently occupy the highest-paid spots over punters and long snappers.
Former NFL player Jake Thieneman claimed in a TikTok clip that an average NFL water boy makes around $53.000, noting that the actual figure depends on the team's status and the applicant's experience.
But they're not that well financially rewarded. According to various reports, a professional NFL cheerleader can earn around $75,000 a year. But a supporting cheerleader is only paid around $20,000 a year. Professional cheerleaders are paid a salary of around $15-20 an hour.
Luckily, no professional sports team has ever suffered a catastrophic plane crash. There have been close calls, such as in 1960, when a plane carrying the Minneapolis Lakers made an emergency landing in an Iowa cornfield. But nothing catastrophic has ever happened.
If the game is still tied at the end of an overtime period — or if the second team's initial possession has not ended — the teams will play another overtime period.
Many believe that only the team and coaches are given a ring but in truth, both the winning and losing team are allotted 150 Super Bowl Rings to be distributed (but not limited to) active and injured players , coaches, trainers, executives, personnel, and general staff.
Football players, mostly quarterbacks and wide receivers, can be seen wearing this thick piece of material around their waist. These fanny packs are actually called hand warmers. Inside of the fanny packs is small individual hand warmers that keep the player's hands warm.
In the history of the National Football League (NFL), 21 different quarterbacks have passed for at least 500 yards in a single game 26 times, a feat also referred to as the "500 Club".
(b) "Inactive member" means any member, in good standing, who is not engaged in the practice of law in this state. A person may, upon written request, be enrolled as an inactive member.
Conventionally, inactive persons are defined as being persons who are neither in employment nor unemployed: young people under the age of 15, students, retired people, persons engaged in activities in the household, persons with an incapacity for employment, etc.
The most obvious reason is that most teams have a number of hurt or injured players each week, and forcing teams to keep 7 guys inactive evens the playing field, and also keeps teams from playing guys who are banged up. Otherwise you might have one team with 53 relatively healthy guys and another with only 45 or so.
I am sure the rules are different for different leagues and different competitions, but the general idea is usually the same. The teams are required to submit a list of starting 11 players.
Each team carries 45 to 50 players because the positions are so specialized. You will have 11 players on the field at a time, and it is rare that a player will play on both offense and defense.
As defined by the 2019 NFL Rulebook: Rule 3, Section 40, “Tripping is the use of the leg or foot to obstruct any opponent (including a runner).” Rule 12, Section 1, Article 8 makes tripping a prohibited act.
Football is the sport that causes the most injuries, with an estimated 455,449 annually. Despite all the padding and support players have, football has been the cause of a plethora of injuries, one of the most common being knee injuries.
Basketball, football and soccer have the most injuries overall, but the number of injuries varies with each age group. Football is the most dangerous sport for children ages 5-14, while basketball has the highest number of injuries among people ages 15-24.
How Much do the Most Expensive Football Team Uniforms Cost? Buying custom-made uniforms with your own design and logo can cost between $60-$100 per uniform. Ordering home and away custom uniforms for a team of 45 players will cost between $1800-$3000.
Some of the guidelines for NFL dress code include team jerseys that must be tucked in, and towels that are only allowed to be placed into the front waist of a players' pants. Mandatory equipment that is to be worn by all players, with the exception of punters and kickers, include shoulder pads, thigh and knee pads.
The 38-year-old shot-stopper, who played alongside Ronaldo between 2007 and 2009, revealed professional footballers are required to fork out for the kit they give away.
“Footballers actually have to pay for every shirt” – Ben Foster estimates how much Cristiano Ronaldo has spent on giving jerseys away after games. Ronaldo could owe a large sum due to shirts he has given away.
Football players use the towels to keep their hands and/or forearms dry when they play. Wet or moist hands can affect one's grip on the ball, and can even spell the difference between winning or losing a match.
After a football game, there is a 10-minute-long cooling off period. This time is usually used for the coach to issue post-game comments, or for players to celebrate or curse their fate, or for players to engage in prayer, as many do. Some use that time to shower and dress rather quickly.
If a game happens during snowy or rainy conditions, it will create additional moisture that makes it difficult for players to throw, catch, and hold on to the ball. So, by tucking a towel into the front of their pants, they can keep their hands as dry as possible.
Each game check corresponds to a portion of the player's yearly salary, but does not include any monies from bonuses. In total, each player will receive 17 game checks per season. What Bonuses Do NFL Players Get? Each NFL player – or their agent – usually negotiates a number of bonuses to be included in his contract.
How Long Do You Have to Play in the NFL to Get a Pension? NFL players must play for three seasons before they can be eligible to receive a pension. That's when he'll be considered vested. Meaning he's eligible to receive benefits negotiated under the CBA.
For every holdout, one side is going to have more leverage. Who has that leverage depends on a variety of factors. The team holds the trump card—the player is under contract and has to show up at some point if he wants to be paid. Under the NFL's new rookie wage scale, players who hold out can be fined $30,000 per day.
Compared to sports leagues worldwide, refereeing in the NFL is a high-paying profession compared to the common ground. So, how much do nfl refs make? According to the major sports sites (including FanDuel), NFL referees make about $205,000/year.
They earn a weekly salary but only during the season with conditions set on whether they play and how they perform. Like other workers they get bonuses that are paid outside the regular schedule of payments. In order to understand how NFL players get paid, a look at different parts of their contracts is needed.
The winning Pro Bowlers will make $80,000 while the losing players make $40,000. That isn't chump change by any means. Of course, many of these players have contracts that dwarf these numbers, but not all of them. And, with millions of people watching and attending, the NFL isn't doing this all for charity either.
The minimum weekly wage for players with two or fewer NFL seasons is $11,500, or $207,000 for an 18-week stint on the practice squad. When a player is on full-time pay status for at least six regular-season games, they have accrued a season.
The player in question would have to have played in the NFL for ten years, past 1993, and they then receive that $43,560 per year, tax-free, after the age of 55.
Professional athletes must file tax returns for each state that requires jock tax. According to a CNBC article, NFL players file between eight to 12 tax returns each season.
To be eligible for the draft, players must have been out of high school for at least three years and must have used up their college eligibility before the start of the next college football season.
While it has been more than six decades since it occurred, the truth is that a team has played an entire NFL game without attempting a single pass. In fact, it's happened on five different occasions.
3. Game Fixing: NFL Personnel shall not throw or fix any NFL game or in any way influence its outcome, statistics, or score; or otherwise manipulate or attempt to manipulate any other aspect of any NFL game for a gambling-related purpose.
Former NFL player Jake Thieneman claimed in a TikTok clip that an average NFL water boy makes around $53.000, noting that the actual figure depends on the team's status and the applicant's experience.
NFL waterboys travel with the team to away matches and have the opportunity to take part in the camaraderie. NFL waterboys are provided with two free game tickets each year. They can also receive free souvenirs such as jockstraps and jerseys that they can keep, trade, or wear.
Introduction: My name is Tish Haag, I am a excited, delightful, curious, beautiful, agreeable, enchanting, fancy person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20044586/110334433.jpg.jpg "Why does the NFL have inactive players on game day? (1)")
