Steelers waive/injured Devin Gardner to clear spot for Hartley

[polamalubeast]

http://www.steelersdepot.com/2015/08/steelers-waiveinjured-rookie-wr-devin-gardner-on-tuesday/

[86WARD]

He got rocked on that one play. What was his injury?

[Bluecoat96]

He got rocked on that one play. What was his injury?
Gas pains? Those can be a real bitch.

[86WARD]

I hear you...I've had them...

[steelreserve]

Wouldn't the expected move be to put Suisham on IR to clear the roster spot? Unless there's some training-camp rule that prevents you from doing that easily. Sucks, I was hoping to see whether Gardner could actually turn into an exciting player for us, and one pre-preseason game is hardly a good test of that.

[Count Steeler]

The Steelers do make personnel moves that make me scratch my head. My thoughts exactly steelreserve. Suisham goes on IR, frees up a roster spot. Why waive another player?

[polamalubeast]

The Steelers do make personnel moves that make me scratch my head. My thoughts exactly steelreserve. Suisham goes on IR, frees up a roster spot. Why waive another player?

The Steelers can not do that, otherwise they will lose him

[Count Steeler]

The Steelers can not do that, otherwise they will lose him

How do they lose Suisham if they put him on IR?

[salamander]

Yeah, I'm confused too as to why they didn't just Place Suisham on IR if he's having season ending injury.....

[steelreserve]

Well, it does look like they also placed Suisham on IR yesterday. So the Gardner thing must have been a separate issue entirely:

http://www.steelers.com/team/transactions.html?campaign=social_20150811_5065988 6&adbid=10153621368064905&adbpl=fb&adbpr=146175949904


I did a little reading on the preseason Injured Reserve versus waived/injured rules, and I think I know where the confusion is. Basically, you can put a veteran straight on IR, but if you have less than 4 years in the league, you have to stay on the active roster until the final cutdown of preseason, or else be declared waived/injured, which gives other teams a chance to claim you.



“Prior to the first cutdown date, injured players with less than 4 years of service cannot go onto IR until they pass through waivers. Those players are released with the “waived/injured” designation. Known as “injury waivers”, this process exposes the player to waivers, but warns other teams that the player is injured. If the player clears injury waivers, the team can then either place the player on IR or agree to an injury settlement (paying the player for the weeks that he is expected to be recovering from his injury) and then release the player.”

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/seahawks/2014/08/03/explaining-the-waivedinjured-process/

The reason is probably to prevent the old problem of using IR to stash talent. 4 years is designed to cover the period when players are on their rookie contracts and you can keep them at an artificially low price. For veteran players it wouldn't be a problem, since they're on a market-value deal and still count against the cap.