The Turk needs a raise.
With the NFL expanding offseason and training-camp rosters to 90 for the first time in league history, there will be even more fat to trim when the time comes to turn in playbooks.
Within the next nine days, teams will move to 75 and then to 53 players. The first deadline comes Monday at 4:00 p.m. ET. By Friday, August 31 at 9:00 p.m. ET, all teams must be at 53 players.
This means that 1,184 players who currently are practicing and playing will soon be not practicing or playing.
Well, not all of them. As an unprecedented throng floods the market, other teams will do the trash-treasure thing, looking for players who can help them out. The Cowboys will look for wideouts, the Packers will look for quarterbacks, the Raiders will look for running backs, the Giants will look for defensive tackles, the Bears will look for offensive linemen, and the Colts will look for defensive backs.
And that will trigger a second wave of roster cuts, with new arrivals bouncing players who thought they had made it onto the 53-man roster.
The sheer number of players who will be ready to play underscores the need for a real NFL minor league, which would be wholly owned and operated by the league — and which would give players a framework to stay in shape and get live reps via games played on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in cities that don’t have an NFL franchise.
That makes way too much sense to ever get any traction.