NFL waiver order and cutdown chaos: how the Packers’ spot at 20th shapes Monday

The NFL’s roster cutdown weekend does not end with the final departures from active rosters. The next phase begins on Monday, when players who are not kept by their teams and are placed on waivers enter the league’s claim window. From there, teams have to decide quickly, because the order and timing can determine whether a player is available to be claimed or instead becomes a free agent after the waiver period. For the Green Bay Packers, the key detail heading into that process is their position in the waiver order, which Yahoo Sports notes is 20th at the cutdown deadline.

In practical terms, the league’s waiver process is designed to distribute newly available players among teams in a predetermined order rather than all clubs bidding at once. The day after Sunday’s roster moves is where it typically becomes “convoluted and hectic,” because multiple teams can submit claims and the results ripple across the rest of the waiver list. A player can be claimed by a new team, which immediately creates a new roster spot and a new set of installation priorities for coaches, or the player can clear waivers and then be free to sign elsewhere.

The Packers’ placement in the waiver order at 20th matters because it sits in the middle of the list rather than near the top. Teams with earlier waiver positions generally have first access to players placed on waivers, while later-order teams must wait to see which options are still unclaimed. That timing can influence how a team approaches depth at multiple positions, especially as franchises try to identify the most plug-and-play prospects from the pool created by cutdowns.

Alongside waivers, the NFL’s practice squad build begins almost immediately. After cuts, clubs typically prepare to fill out practice squad spots with players they believe can develop within their systems. That means Monday is not simply about who claims which player on waivers. It is also about internal decision-making that spans both the active roster claim process and the broader talent-evaluation funnel that feeds the practice squad.

A further complication is that the player pool is not uniform. Waiver-eligible players can include veterans released for roster arithmetic as well as younger players whose upside shows up in camps but did not translate into a final roster spot. For teams, that mix makes Monday’s process feel less like a single transaction and more like a coordinated set of roster bets across several positions.

It is also important to remember that the waiver order framework is only one part of the outcome. Whether a claim happens depends on team needs, roster constraints, and how staff members evaluate a specific player relative to alternatives that might become available later in the list. Even with a mid-range slot like 20th, a team can still end up with targets if the specific players it wants remain unclaimed by earlier teams.

What to watch next is straightforward: once Monday’s claims are processed, the remaining waiver-eligible players will be either claimed or set on a path to free agency, and that will quickly feed into practice squad decisions. For the Packers in particular, the immediate question is which, if any, players on waivers remain available after the earlier-order clubs make their moves, and how that shapes their early-week roster depth.

If you want the cleanest way to track the storyline, focus on player availability relative to the waiver order. The Packers are positioned at 20th at cutdown deadline, so their offseason work in camp and training staff evaluations has to show up quickly in the subset of players who clear waivers after claims higher up the list have been addressed.