For the fifth straight season, the NFL’s salary cap has gone up, with NFL insider Tom Pelissero reporting today that the $224.8 million is a record high.
Despite the influx of cash, the Jaguars still potentially find themselves in a bind.
According to Over The Cap, the Jacksonville Jaguars currently sit at approximately $22.2 million over the cap and with core pieces such as tight end Evan Engram, defensive end Arden Key, and cornerback Tre Herndon among the players set to hit unrestricted free agency, the Jags certainly have an interesting predicament on their hands.
General manager Trent Baalke made it clear last week that maneuvering the salary cap is possible, but the team will tread carefully in how they do so.
“Cash is more important than cap,” Baalke said. “There’s ways to maneuver the cap, and there’s ways to extend things into the future, but you’ve also got to be smart and diligent when you’re doing that. Again, we’re going to look at all of our options, we’re going to meet as a staff tomorrow, go through what our wish list is, then we’ll sit down with ownership, we’ll sit down with those that work on the cap and contracts, we’ll sit down with them, and we have been. We’ll have a final meeting with them to really get the ball rolling for the future.”
Minimal flexibility makes the draft even more important this off-season for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Sustained success is built through these means, and Baalke is ready to add more promising talent to an already established young nucleus.
“Yeah I think it has to be that moment,” Baalke said when asked if this is an off-season where the franchise will focus more on the draft. “First of all, we’re up against the cap a lot more than we were the previous two years. We feel really good about the nucleus of young players that we have on the team. I believe we’re the fifth or sixth youngest team in the National Football League right now. We have a lot of young players on their first contracts, a lot of players overall on their first contracts. As you transition into more guys who are on their second deals, it becomes more and more difficult to use free agency as a strong vehicle to improve your team, so we’ve got to look at the draft. We’ve got to look at developing the guys that are currently here and obviously retain as many of these guys as we can.”
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