Ask Mike – September 10, 2007

The reason for the 53 man roster with inactives is because of injuries. It allows you to keep some players on your active roster (de-activated for the game) even though they are not healthy enough to play that week. Instead of having to put a guy on IR if he'll only be out for a few weeks, that way all teams have the same number of healthy players on game day. The NFL will not change this rule because it makes sense.

thanks. that does make so much more sense now, but still, if you have 53 healthy....