The Jacksonville Jaguars are among the league leaders heading into the upcoming season in dead salary cap.
The Jacksonville Jaguars are among the league leaders heading into the upcoming season in dead cap on their 2025 salary cap books.
Dead cap is dollars that still count against a team’s salary cap amount even if that player is on another team. In short, dead cap is money that the team has paid to the player but has not yet been accounted for on the salary cap.
Oftentimes, this can come from signing bonuses or other guarantees. A player gets that signing bonus money up front, but from an accounting perspective, a team can spread that cap hit out over the life of the deal.
For example, if a player gets an $8 million signing bonus on a four-year deal, cap-wise, the team can spread that out by incurring a $2 million cap hit in Year 1, a $2 million cap hit in Year 2, and so on. But if that player is released after Year 2, there is still $4 million from that signing bonus that hasn’t hit the books (Years 3 and 4), so that would become dead cap.
In James Gladstone’s first offseason, there has been a hefty amount of roster turnover, and with that, there has been a lot of dead cap that the Jaguars have had to absorb.
According to Over the Cap, the Jaguars have the third-most dead cap on the books this season. Currently, they are at $58.94 million in dead cap, but once we get past June 1st, and Gabe Davis’ release is official, that will increase to $64.64 million.
Brandon Scherff: $13.801 millionChristian Kirk: $13.652 millionEvan Engram: $13.50 millionRoy Robertson-Harris: $7.70 millionGabe Davis: $5.70 million (post-June 1st)Devin Duvernay: $3.80 millionMitch Morse: $3.20 millionRonald Darby: $2.75 millionBlake Hance: $400,000
Even with all of this dead cap, the Jaguars are still in good salary cap standing overall. They currently have $26.82 million in available space, which is the 12th most.