The Falcons Must Cut Down To 75 Players On August 26th

The Falcons will play their third preseason game Saturday night against the Tennessee Titans. After that, they'll be spending most of the next three days deciding which 15 players will wind up being banished from the roster.

It's not an easy decision to make, but the first round of cuts certainly features less agonizing decisions than the second, which comes just five days later and will feature an additional 22 cuts, and then the creation of an eight-man practice squad. At this point, the coaching staff has a pretty clear idea of who has no shot to make the roster, and if you've been watching these games and noting which players aren't even playing well with the third unit, you probably do too.

The Falcons can afford to burn through a couple of positions. While they will want to evaluate their secondary to the greatest extent possible, given recent strong play from guys like Kemal Ishmael and Kimario McFadden, they are currently carrying 11 wide receivers, and at least three of those guys don't even stand a remote chance of sticking on the final roster. Ditto linebacker, which doesn't have fantastic depth, but does have a few players the team has signaled it has no intention of spend a lot of time on, at least thus far.

In case you wondered, here are my projected 15 cuts. Share yours in the comments.

Alert reader SteveinBrooklyn pointed out that Marquis Spruill will be eligible to go on IR next week, which takes away the need for one cut. I've removed Cliff Matthews from this list as a result.

IR Marquis Spruill
QB Jeff Mathews
RB Jerome Smith
WR Freddie Martino
WR Jabin Sambrano
WR Julian Jones
TE Brian Wozniak
DE Nosa Eguae
DT Theo Agnew
DT Donte Rumph
LB Brenden Daley
LB Walker May
LB Darin Drakeford
CB Devonta Glover-Wright
S Tyrell Johnson