The Minnesota Vikings have waived-injured former Texans and Florida Atlantic receiver Lestar Jean, per the NFL transactions report. It’s not clear what injury Jean suffered from, and as far as I could tell he didn’t show up in any of the injury reports put out by ESPN, 1500ESPN, the Star Tribune or the Pioneer Press.

It must be a serious injury if the Vikings weren’t willing to wait it out for camp, as they don’t have an answer for the fifth or sixth receiver spots on the roster. “Waived-injured” is a specific designation teams must give a player if they intend to put that player on injured reserve. Unlike the process during the season, a player must go through waivers if a team intends to put him on injured reserve, and expose him to other teams.

The designation lets other teams know that this player is injured, and they very rarely claim those players as a result (a famous exception being when the New England Patriots claimed an injured Jake Ballard).

If they do not put Jean on injured reserve and he is not claimed by a team, he will be subject to an injury settlement that the team and his agent will agree to. That injury settlement is pay for the time the player is expected to miss while healing, and he can only claim it if he does not sign with a team until that date.

I don’t expect this to have a huge impact, and not just for the simple reason that he would be competing for a bottom receiver spot—I expected Erik Lora, Rodney Smith or Adam Thielen to compete for that spot, with some shots by Kain Colter.