How the Giants Are Using an Empty Roster Spot to Avoid a Season-Long Salary Guarantee

The New York Giants have carried 52 of their 53 roster spots into their Sept. 13 season opener against the Dallas Cowboys. It isn't indecision. It's a documented mechanic in the NFL's collective bargaining agreement.

Article 30 of the CBA, known as Termination Pay, guarantees a vested veteran — a player with four or more years of credited service under the Bert Bell/Pete Rozelle Retirement Plan — his full remaining base salary for the season if he is released after being on his team's Active/Inactive List on or after the date of the club's first regular-season game. Cut him before that date and the club owes nothing beyond what's already guaranteed. Cut him after, and the full balance comes due.

Article 33, Section 5(i) of the same agreement creates the workaround: a practice-squad player's elevation to the Active/Inactive List for a game "shall not serve as the basis for any claim for Termination Pay." A vested veteran can play in games off the practice squad, elevation by elevation, without ever triggering the guarantee that a standard 53-man roster spot would. The rule applies to all 32 teams equally — any club carrying a vested veteran it isn't fully committed to has the same incentive to use elevations instead of a roster spot.

New York released receiver Darius Slayton on Sept. 7, ending his seven-year run with the team, according to the club's transaction log, which lists the move as "Terminated, Vested Veteran." Return specialist Braxton Berrios, cut over the same weekend and immediately re-signed to the practice squad on Aug. 31 as a vested-veteran exception, remains there as of Sept. 9. Coach John Harbaugh said the plan is to "treat him like he's playing on the 53" — elevating him for game days rather than adding him to the roster outright, GMenHQ reported. Berrios, in his eighth NFL season since being drafted by New England in 2018, is expected to be elevated for the Cowboys game to handle return duties, ESPN's Jordan Raanan reported. Each vested veteran can be elevated up to three times before a club must sign him to the 53-man roster to keep using him.

The Giants' public comments don't name Article 30 or "Termination Pay" directly — the reporting on the situation describes the roster mechanics without citing the underlying CBA language. But the mechanism matches the rule: an open roster spot filled by elevation, not by signing, keeps a team from being on the hook for a vested veteran's full season salary if his role doesn't pan out.

Berrios can be elevated twice more this season before the Giants must either sign him to the 53-man roster or leave him off it.