The Jacksonville Jaguars are among the league leaders this season in dead salary cap space on their 2025 books.
In short, dead cap space is a salary cap charge that the team still incurs even if that player is no longer on the team. These are dollars that have already been paid to that player but have not yet counted towards the salary cap, given the structure of the deal.
According to Over the Cap, the Jaguars are carrying $58.94 million in dead money for the 2025 season. This is the third-most in the NFL, behind only the San Francisco 49ers, who have the most with nearly $81 million in dead cap charges, and the Seattle Seahawks.
The reason that the Jaguars have so much dead money is that they released four players, including Evan Engram, traded away Christian Kirk, along with now feeling the repercussions of using void years on Brandon Scherff's contract restructure last offseason.
Engram is leaving behind a dead cap hit of $13.5 million, Kirk $13.62 million, and Scherff has a dead cap charge of $13.8 million.
A positive for the Jaguars in regards to the cap, and why these cuts and the trade were made, is that even with the dead cap charges on the books from Engram, Kirk, and others, overall, Jacksonville actually saved cap space by moving on from each player. The reason for that is it was more expensive cap-wise to have Engram and Kirk on the roster than it is to not have them on it--even with the dead cap charges.
"Really have so much respect for the people and the players that both Christian and Evan are, and they meant a lot to the locker room," Gladstone said via Jaguars on SI. "We'll continue to bring those types of people and players into our ecosystem, but we needed a little bit more flexibility to address the larger scale roster after some departures across the OL as well."
So despite having a hefty amount of dead cap on the books, this didn't impact the Jaguars' offseason approach in free agency, and they still sit in good salary cap standing overall.
Next offseason, all of these dead cap charges will be off the books.
This article originally appeared on Jaguars Wire: Jaguars salary cap update: Jacksonville among teams with most dead cap
