The Detroit Lions have made their final roster moves in preparation for Thursday night’s game against the Buffalo Bills, and none of them are particularly surprising.
First, the Lions have signed defensive tackle Levi Onwuzurike from the practice squad to the 53-man roster. Last week, the Lions cut Onwuzurike and signed him to the practice squad. While no formal explanation was given by the team, there is a pretty common strategy that the Lions appear to have implemented. Vested veterans see their
entire annual salary become guaranteed if they’re on the 53-man roster during the team’s Week 1 game. The Lions avoided this last week by playing Ben Stille over Onwuzurike. Now that Onwuzurike is on the roster, he’s eligible to play on Thursday, but his salary won’t be guaranteed.
The other two moves the Lions made were temporarily elevating two offensive linemen from the practice squad: Seth McLaughlin and Devin Cochran.
These moves were expected, because the Lions have already declared two offensive linemen OUT for this game due to injury: starting left guard Christian Mahogany and starting right tackle Blake Miller. McLaughlin and Cochran will not only give Detroit better depth along the offensive line, but their addition also pushes Detroit’s game-day roster to eight offensive linemen, allowing the team to keep an extra player eligible to play—moving from 47 players to 48.
So with the Lions’ 53-man roster back to 53 players, plus the two practice squad elevations for the Bills game (55 total players), the Lions will have to declare seven inactive players for Thursday night to get down to 48. Two of those are already known, with Mahogany and Miller out.
