All NFL teams had to get down to 80 players on Tuesday. There were no exceptions, so the Dallas Cowboys were among the teams who had to trim down their offseason roster from 85 like the other 31 teams. To do so, Dallas ended their kicker competition, sent a veteran TE from 2021’s roster to IR for the year and released three players who didn’t have much of a shot of making the roster.
K Brett Maher received a vote of confidence in the release of Lirim Hajrallah while UDFA TE Peyton Hendershot saw his chances of a roster spot or practice squad role skyrocket with Jeremy Sprinkle being shut down for the year. One injured player who is expected back may have gotten an under-the-radar signal boost, too. WR Michael Gallup wasn’t involved in the transaction wire on Tuesday, and there may be something to the fact that he wasn’t.
A little known rule change allowed teams to move players from the Active/PUP list to the Reserve/PUP list in the cutdown from 85 to 80 players. Gallup, who is the lone Cowboys player on PUP (rookie Damone Clark is on NFI which is basically the same thing but works with us here) was not moved.
Old way
Here’s the 2021 rules, where it mentions being able to move players to Reserve/PUP upon final cutdowns.
New way
Now here’s the 2022 version where it explicitly mentions the ability to move players during the cutdown to 80.
Well alright, alright, alright!
PUP rules re: Gallup
A player must be placed on the PUP list to start training camp. Just one single practice and it makes the player ineligible for the list. Recovering from spring ACL surgery after suffering the injury in early January, the Cowboys have always been optimistic about when Gallup could return to the field.
Originally they said it could be Week 1, but that was quickly backed away from, including by Gallup himself. But no timetable had been officially set.
So back to the PUP explanation.
A player is on Active/PUP while the offseason roster is in effect, but once the club cuts down to 53, a player either needs to be activated and counted on the regular-season roster, or moved to Reserve/PUP. That knocks the player out for at least the first four weeks of the season before he can be activated.
What could it all mean?
So working the tea leaves, the Cowboys needed to cut down to 80 players by 3:00 pm Tuesday afternoon. The Cowboys are in the middle of a kicking competition, and despite the fact that they could have waited to declare a winner, they finalized that move.
An option would’ve been to move Gallup to Reserve/PUP, free that roster spot and nobody would’ve really blinked an eye.
But they didn’t. They kept open the possibility that Gallup might make the initial 53-man roster and potentially be activated before Week 5.
Now, this thought exercise could all be for naught. Dallas might just be biding their time and seeing how Gallup continues to progress. They could have just wanted to end the competition and avoid the drama. There could be absolutely no significance to not having Gallup on today’s transaction list. Heck, the Cowboys might have been totally unaware they could’ve moved Gallup this early for all we know.
But… we’re saying there’s a chance.
Story originally appeared on Cowboys Wire