In a somewhat unsurprising move following two free agency additions and first-round NFL draft selection to bolster the position this offseason, Jacksonville released wide receiver Zay Jones on Tuesday, after two seasons together.
His exit is the second of significance from Jacksonville’s receiver room this offseason, after fellow 2023 starter Calvin Ridley secured a massive payday from AFC South rival Tennessee, roughly an hour into free agency.
Ridley was believed to be preparing to re-sign with the Jaguars, the team he logged 1,016 receiving yards with last year after more than a season out of football, before the Titans made their contract offer.
Return specialist and depth pass-catcher Jamal Agnew hit free agency, too, not retained by the club.
Yet while Jacksonville lost its No. 1 wide receiver from 2023 just over a month ago, it appears confident in the investments it made at the position to compensate, enough to move on from the seven-year veteran Jones and pocket roughly $4.7 million in salary cap savings.
Over two seasons with the franchise, Jones caught 116 passes for 1,144 yards and seven touchdowns, adding 13 receptions for 157 yards and a touchdown in the playoffs. When healthy, he proved to be a reliable possession receiver who could make occasional clutch plays.
But Jones was far from robust in 2023, resulting in a steep drop in his production compared to 2022, when he produced single-season career highs of 82 receptions for 832 yards, with five touchdowns. Last year, he caught 34 passes for 321 yards and two touchdowns over nine games.
Jacksonville knew entering the 2024 offseason that its wide receiver room needed upgrades and improved depth, leading to a domino effect of moves that ultimately resulted in Jones’ release.
His and Agnew’s lacking availability (the duo combined to miss 14 games in 2023) and contract statuses, paired with Ridley’s departure, allowed the Jaguars to be aggressive in restructuring the position.
Before Ridley even hit free agency, the Jaguars appeared to have a replacement lined up for Jones in free agent signee and former Buffalo receiver, Gabe Davis. The same could be said for Agnew, as Jacksonville agreed to terms with former Baltimore receiver and return specialist, Devin Duvernay.
But when Ridley bounced on March 13, the day Davis and Duvernay’s anticipated signings were made official, Davis, who has started 47 games in his career, quickly became Ridley’s apparent successor. Jones remained on the roster for over another month.
Then Jacksonville took LSU wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr. at No. 23 overall in last week’s NFL draft.
Carrying the 24th-highest salary cap hit among NFL receivers in 2024 yet relegated to No. 4 wide receiver status — behind slot receiver Christian Kirk, Davis and Thomas on the Jaguars’ depth chart — Jones would have been one of the most expensive backups at any position in the NFL this season if he remained on his contract.
For comparison, Jacksonville’s tied-for-fourth-highest-targeted wide receivers in 2023, Agnew and Parker Washington, were thrown to only 21 times apiece.
The Jaguars believe contributors less expensive than Jones can handle that role. Duvernay, Washington, Tim Jones, Elijah Cooks, Seth Williams, five undrafted free agent signings and even nine-season veteran Jarvis Landry will compete for that spot and others in Jacksonville’s receiver lineup this offseason.
At the top of their receiver room, the Jaguars hope the versatile trio of Kirk, Davis and Thomas, paired with tight end Evan Engram, will become quarterback Trevor Lawrence’s best as he enters a pivotal fourth season with the franchise, with their eyes also on the future.
Each player is under contract with Jacksonville through at least 2025. and Jacksonville’s front office has begun negotiations with Lawrence and his representatives regarding a long-term contract extension.
“I think the more opportunities and the more weapons you can surround your quarterback with, I think the better your chances are going to be,” Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson said after Thomas’ selection on April 25. “Now, we have to coach them and we have to play and there’s a lot of things that go into that. But it does help your chances.”
In the short term, Pederson wishes for the Jaguars’ younger, new-look receiving quartet to improve the team’s intermediate passing attack, where the team struggled in 2023 compared to 2022.
According to Pro Football Focus, Lawrence completed 58-of-123 (47.2%) of his 10-to-19-yard throws last season compared to his 84-of-138 (60.9%) mark the year before.
Receivers dropped nearly one percent more passes in that range in 2023 (6.5%) versus 2022 (5.6%). Lawrence’s intermediate adjusted completion percentage last season, accounting for throwing accuracy, was 3.2% higher than his actual completion percentage at that field level.
“That’s something that we talked about in here the last couple of days too, what these skill positions can do. It opens up that second level, intermediate zones, in your passing game,” Pederson shared on April 27.
“That’s where Evan can get a lot of his targets in there and Christian gets a lot of targets in there. Gabe, you look at his career, he’s gotten a lot of targets in there … Gabe can stretch the field a little bit, Brian now can stretch the field obviously and we’ll see once we get everybody in there and all the pieces together just how this thing unfolds.”
Although Jacksonville intended to return Ridley in 2024, it managed to restock its receiving corps throughout the offseason without making any single pass-catcher one of the highest-paid in the NFL, as it did with Kirk in 2022.
The Jaguars replaced Ridley with a first-round pick in Thomas and netted additional draft picks in the process by trading down six slots, supplanted Jones with another big-bodied and younger boundary threat in Davis, and superseded Agnew with a more productive yet less experienced rotational piece in Duvernay.
Time should soon tell if Jacksonville upgraded the unit. But at least, the Jaguars’ wide receiver room is younger, cheaper (aside from Kirk, whose cap number rose by over $12 million this offseason) and arguably deeper in talent now than in 2023, and how it could have been in 2024.