Regardless of the savings, it makes sense Jacksonville has held onto Armstead.<\/p>\n
The Jaguars are in win-now mode after going 13-4 to capture the AFC South. Although they used three of their 2026 draft picks to beef up the defensive line and traded<\/a> for Ruke Orhorhoro<\/a> in April, Armstead is their surest immediate bet to generate inside pressure on the quarterback.<\/p>\n His contract is weighty heading into his final year on the deal, but Armstead was second on Jacksonville in sacks in 2025. His 5.5 sacks marked his third-best single-season total of his career and his best output since 2021. He reached that number despite suffering a hand injury in late November that caused him to miss a game and his snap count to plummet upon his return.<\/p>\n After averaging 73.8% of the team’s defensive snaps from Weeks 9-12, Armstead missed Week 13, then was on the field for an average of 38.4% of defensive plays over the final five games of the regular season. His last sack came in Week 11, as the injury stymied his production.<\/p>\n “I was playing with one hand for six games,” Armstead said. “Couldn’t play as many snaps because it was hard to play the run with just one hand so I was limited to (pass-rush) situations. As I got more comfortable (with the cast), I was able to be somewhat effective, but couldn’t grab (his blocker) and couldn’t do certain moves.”<\/p>\n Having found his groove early on for a Jags defense that was top 10 in points allowed for the first time in seven years, there’s reason to believe Armstead, healthy again, can do so once more in his age-33 season.<\/p>\n Beyond that, the veteran knows the future is flexible.<\/p>\n “My focus is being my best self and the best player I can be,” Armstead said. “That’s all I can control.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Regardless of the savings, it makes sense Jacksonville has held onto Armstead. The Jaguars are in win-now mode…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":934904,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1749,1227,7,125,88,6,609,4267],"class_list":["post-934903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-arik-armstead","tag-around-the-nfl","tag-football","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-no-minute","tag-offseason-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116852069725986215","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/934904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}