‘A lot of anxiety.’ With the 53-man roster deadline behind us, here’s how the Dolphins felt

Andrew Meyer had a very long Tuesday.

An undrafted rookie interior lineman, Meyer tried not to dwell on whether or not he would make the 53-man roster. So he went to the movies. Called family. Relaxed. Then the news finally came through.

“I Immediately started crying,” Meyer recalled Tuesday. “It was a dreams to reality moment. As soon as it happened, I literally couldn’t sit still for four hours after. I was just walking around, shaking. It was an incredible feeling for sure.”

Meyer’s experience, however, isn’t necessarily unique. The Tuesday after the final preseason game always incites anxiety across the entire NFL, especially if you’re a player on the roster bubble. A total of 32 players had to be cut in order to meet the 53-man roster limit, something that fans certainly know about but can never truly understand.

“It’s always a lot of anxiety about what’s going to happen,” Tanner Conner said. An undrafted tight end out of Idaho State, Conner made the Dolphins’ 2022 53-man roster. In 2023, he was waived but was later re-signed to the Dolphins’ practice squad. “There’s not many jobs in the world, if at all, where you can get fired for the rest of your life.”

Tuesday was even more different than usual. In the past, the Dolphins would have practice on cut day, but that wasn’t the case this time. That meant players would have to find a way to occupy themselves, something easier said than done.

“All you can do is distract your mind,” linebacker Channing Tindall said. “Maybe get some food or go to the movies. Just do something. Me, I’m a big video gamer so I was playing that new ‘Black Myth: Wukong’ that just came out.”

Many didn’t even find out that they made the team until the very last minute.

“When I got cut last year, I came in and there was somebody waiting for me to go upstairs and talk to administration or what not,” Tanner recalled. “This year, it was like if you received a call. I didn’t really know until the roster was released from the Dolphins.”

“I saw it only online,” quipped undrafted rookie Storm Duck.

Then comes the post-cut day practice.

“It feels empty,” Quinton Bell said. “A lot of guys aren’t here anymore, guys that you’ve seen for the last couple months or so are just not here anymore.”

Added Conner: “You go out there for training camp and it feels so full because you have fans in the stands and everything. All of a sudden cuts happen. Some of your boys leave. You go out there and it feels like a ghost town.”

Bell is quite familiar with this process. A 2019 seventh-round pick by the Raiders, Bell has been waived six times as well as promoted and demoted from various practice squads dozens of times across his five-year career.

“I feel for every single person who has to go through that because it’s a lot,” Bell said, later adding that “the more unsure you are, the worst it feels.”

“A lot of lives get changed, some in a good way, some in a bad way,” he added. “At the end of the day, we’re human — people have families, people have emotions — and this is a lot of people’s livelihoods.”

After a stellar training camp, Bell appears to have found a home with the Dolphins. And while he’s fully aware of the business side, the Prairie View A&M product plans to make the most of his time in the aqua and orange.

“I never felt like I had a bad day,” Bell said. “And going into cut day, my head was high. I left everything I had out there and whatever decision they make, I had no regrets.”

Miami Herald sports writer Barry Jackson contributed to this report.