Vikes, Browns ‘win’ 8th round … At least from a purely draft perspective, the big story from this week’s roster reductions as NFL teams worked to get down to their 53-man opening day rosters was how the 2025 draft class fared. Part B of the exercise, though, is just how many undrafted rookie free agents ultimately made the cut. And according to our very unofficial count, around 55 undrafted rookies made an NFL roster this week, while another 20 were placed on a reserve list. The number of UDFAs who made an opening day roster this week, tough, is down somewhat from figures earlier this decade when the number was generally just over 60. Of course, the number of undrafted rookies who made a roster also represents only about around 10% of all UDFAs who originally signed with a team following the draft, compared with with over 90% of those drafted and even 65% of those selected in the 7th round.
That said, a significant majority of teams kept at least one undrafted rookie free agent on their 53-man roster this week. Indeed, 26 of the 32 teams will head into the season with at least one undrafted rookie on their 53. That includes Minnesota and Cleveland which kept 7 and 6 undrafted rookie free agent respectively; in fact, the Vikings will go into the season with more undrafted rookie free agents on their roster (7) that players they actually drafted (4) as because of trades the Vikings only had 5 picks period this past April. For its part, Cleveland kept the same number of UDFAs as draft picks – 6 each – and head into the season with the most (12) rookies of any team on their roster. In fact, no other team kept more than 3 undrafted rookie free agents on their opening day roster, although several teams including Baltimore, Carolina, Cincinnati, Seattle, Tampa Bay and the LA Chargers kept three each, while Chicago, Jacksonville, New England, Philadelphia, and Tennessee each retained a couple. And for the record, the ‘laggards’ that did not keep any UDFAs include Buffalo, Detroit, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, the NY Jets and the LA Chargers.
For the record, here is the now updated list of undrafted rookie free agent signings this year, although we do note that it really only includes rosters submitted to the league prior to this week’s roster deadline and does not include UDFAs signed or released since as teams tweak their rosters heading toward the season.
