Now that all three of the Minnesota Vikings’ preseason games are in the books, it’s time for the team to trim their roster down to 53 players before the 3:00 PM Central Tuesday deadline. The Vikings currently have 91 players on the roster, including the exemption they have for International Player Sammis Reyes, so they have some decisions to make over the next 48 hours or so.

In order to do that, they could potentially take advantage of a new NFL rule that we’ve talked about a couple of times in this space before.

Contrary to what we’ve seen in past years, this year the NFL is allowing teams to put two players on injured reserve ahead of the final cutdowns that they can designate for return later on in the season. Those two distinctions need to be made during the final cuts, those being the cuts that are made between the end of the final preseason game and the aforementioned roster deadline, as opposed to moves made earlier in the preseason.

That’s the reason that the Vikings placing rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy on IR when they did ended his season and made him ineligible for a potential return later on in the year. Had the Vikings waited until now to place McCarthy on IR they could have, potentially, designated him for return later in the season.

So, who could potentially be a target for this for the Vikings?

In his final cutdown projections for the Vikings, Alec Lewis of The Athletic points to UDFA edge defender Gabriel Murphy as a potential candidate. Murphy was someone that the team was excited about early in camp but he suffered an undisclosed injury and has not appeared at all in the preseason. If he’s still dealing with an injury, putting him on IR seems like a pretty easy choice.

There have also been reports that quarterback Jaren Hall suffered a leg injury towards the end of his time in Saturday’s preseason finale in Philadelphia. Hall had an outstanding first half against the Eagles and started the second half as well, but took a hard hit on the first drive and wound up heading to the bench after that. It’s some sort of leg injury for Hall and there hasn’t been any word on the severity of it yet but there’s a chance it could come into play during final cuts.

Lewis also mentions tight end T.J. Hockenson going on injured reserve as well, but I’m not sure why the Vikings would need to do that. Hockenson started the preseason on the Physically Unable to Perform List and has not practiced with the team yet. I believe that the rule is that a player who is not taken off the PUP List before the initial 53-man rosters are assembled reverts to the reserve PUP List and has to miss the first four games of the regular season at a minimum.

If that’s still the case, there wouldn’t be any appreciable difference between moving Hockenson to IR and leaving him on the PUP List. The Vikings could simply leave him on PUP and still have those two potential IR spots for other players who are dealing with injury issues. If I find or receive any clarification on whether or not the rules are different now, I’ll bring them to you as either an update to this piece or in a separate one.

We’ll bring you as much coverage of the Vikings trimming their roster as we can here over the next couple of days as the deadline approaches.