The New Orleans Saints reached the NFL’s 53-player limit on Tuesday, and Mickey Loomis did it with a wave of roster moves that left the club’s opening-day shape in place before the regular season begins. The Saints terminated the contracts of four players, waived 14 more, placed five on Injured Reserve and two on Injured Reserve/Designated to Return.
Loomis, the team’s executive vice president and general manager, announced the changes as the Saints moved to comply with the league’s required roster cutdown. Mason Tipton was placed on Reserve/Physically Unable to Perform, and Brock Rechsteiner was placed on Reserve/Suspended by Commissioner. The club also cleared room around a number of other roster decisions already made in the days leading up to cutdown day, including moves involving Michael Davis, David Long Jr., Daniel Carlson, Zamir White, Garrett Nelson, Ja'Lynn Polk, Mike Reid, Tanner Brown, Jalen Moreno-Cropper and Hunter Dekkers.
The names of the four players whose contracts were terminated and the 14 players who were waived were not disclosed in the roster notice, leaving the final turnover at the bottom of the roster partly obscured even after the Saints hit 53. That is the built-in tradeoff of cutdown day: the headline number is public, but not every face behind it is. The team may still establish a practice squad on Monday, which would give some of those players a path back into the organization if they clear waivers.
The timing matters because the Saints open the regular season on Sunday, September 13, at the Detroit Lions at 12:00 p.m. CT at Ford Field. By then, the club will need its roster decisions settled and its depth chart trimmed to the players it expects to carry into the first game. The work this week is less about headlines than sorting out who is available now, who is sidelined, and who is eligible to come back later.
That is why the 53-man roster matters more than a number on a transaction page. It is the first true snapshot of the Saints’ season, and it arrives with a few blanks still inside it. Monday’s practice squad moves should fill some of those gaps, but the opening question for New Orleans is already fixed: whether the roster that survived cutdown day is sturdy enough to carry the Saints into Detroit.
