With their preseason in the books, the Jacksonville Jaguars are officially under the league’s 53-man roster limit as of Wednesday afternoon. The team cut or traded 27 players between their loss to the Atlanta Falcons and today to get under the threshold, and will now look to add talent from the fresh pool of free agents and waiver wire ahead of their Week 1 matchup against the Washington Commanders.
Any signings they make over the course of the next week and a half will be at the expense of a player who is currently on the roster, so they’ll need a clear idea of their game plan if they choose to upgrade any position between now and September 11th. New players won’t have the benefit of training camp practices or preseason warmup games with the Jaguars, so their use may be limited until they have time to acclimate to the new playbook and schemes they’ll use in Jacksonville.
The team currently has just over nine million dollars in cap space heading into the regular season, giving them plenty of room to add a couple of premium talents from the league’s cut pool if they see fit. They’re still carrying two kickers on the roster as it stands now, rookie James McCourt and second-year leg Jake Verity, so it is likely they’ll let one of the pair walk and move on a player at another position to fill out their depth chart.
Jacksonville could stand to add a backup at the nose tackle position in particular, where they currently have only one player, DaVon Hamilton, under contract. It was rumored that former first-round pick Danny Shelton garnered interest from the Jaguars earlier in the preseason before electing to sign with the Kansas City Chiefs, who released him on Monday after two preseason games.
Whether Shelton would still consider Duval County as a potential landing spot for the 2022 season is unclear, but the team is likely to pursue someone with his skillset before Week 1. They’ll have the benefit of the first priority on the waiver wire as well, so if there is a non-vested contributor they think might fill the backup nose tackle role well, expect general manager Trent Baalke to jump on any opportunity he has to bring in more depth at the position.