NFL waiver wire explained: Which Detroit Lions are impacted

This look at the waiver wire process and how it impacts the Lions roster was sponsored by FanDuel Sportsbook , which currently has the Lions listed at +1700 to win this year's Super Bowl, +850 to win the NFC Championship, and +155 to win the NFC North as the current favorites.

As Jeremy Reisman explained in a roster cuts rules article , when a player is cut from the roster, they'll fall into two categories: "waived" or "released." The category a player falls into depends on how many "credited" seasons in the NFL they have. A player earns a credited season if they spent at least three games in a season on the active roster, or the season on IR, or PUP .

A player with four or more credited seasons is designated as "released," meaning they immediately become a free agent. A player with fewer than four credited seasons is "waived" and therefore subject to the NFL's waiver system, where another NFL team can claim them and keep their contract intact.