On the annual occasion of the NFL’s cruel necessity to trim its rosters down to the mandated 53 players, it’s important to remember that for the hundreds of players who heard the worst possible professional news on Tuesday, August 30, that there is hope after getting cut by one team. If you’ve put good tape out there, other teams will see it, and you might get another shot that way. Perhaps a coach or executive you’ve worked with before is on another team, and that person wants you where they are now. Or maybe a team that’s wafer-thin at your position will roll the dice.
Given the sheer numbers, it makes sense that players cut by one team would find success elsewhere. In rare occasions, players who have been jettisoned, unwanted, have rolled up to other places and played at levels that landed them (at the very least) in a Ring of Honor somewhere, and (at the very most) in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Not everybody releasing players this week is right. And not every player released this week is wrong. It’s important for all of those players to remember that, and perhaps to be inspired by this list of the best players in pro football history to find themselves released by one team, only to succeed beyond anybody’s wildest expectations somewhere else.