Jaguars Get Drop-in-Bucket Relief on Gabe Davis Release

Releasing Gabe Davis on May 7 allowed the Jaguars to give away his No. 0 uniform number, but the wide receiver’s 14-month tenure in Jacksonville will cost the team much more than zero well into the future.

The team will get a small silver lining this week, though. Because Jacksonville released Davis with a post-June 1 designation, league rules allow the team to process the salary-cap ramifications differently. The Jaguars will gain $794,000 in cap room this week, according to NFL contract expert Jason Fitzgerald.

“This goes down as one of the worst free agent signings of all time,” Fitzgerald wrote Sunday on his site, OvertheCap.com. “Davis lasted just a year on this deal. His cap drops from $6.5 million to $5.7 million this year but the Jaguars had to pay Davis $11.5 million as a parting gift. Davis will count for $14.6 million in dead money in 2026. Davis is not under contract to any team in 2026.”

Davis was under contract last season with the Jaguars, who signed him to a three-year, $39-million contract as an unrestricted free agent in March of 2024. At the time, the Trent Baalke signing seemed like a good move. Davis was tantalizingly productive over his first four NFL seasons with Buffalo, especially in the postseason.

But over his 10 games in Jacksonville last year, he registered career lows in receptions (20), yards (239) and touchdown catches (two). And after James Gladstone and Liam Coen took the reins of the team, releasing Davis surprised no one.

The Jaguars might as well invest that small June 1 savings in a high-yield, three-year savings account or CD because they’ll need every penny on Travis Hunter’s second NFL contract before the 2028 season.

That $14.6 million in dead money will certainly hurt in 2026. But Hunter and the Jaguars’ 2025 rookie class can ease the pain.

Two months before releasing Davis, Gladstone incinerated the team’s roster in early March. Gladstone flipped another wide receiver, Christian Kirk, to Houston for a seventh-round pick in 2026. Then, he released tight end Evan Engram ($5.985 million in cap savings), wide receiver Josh Reynolds ($4.26 million) and wide receiver and return specialist Devin Duvernay ($2.73 million). On the defensive side, Gladstone released cornerback Ronald Darby to save another $2.38 million.

According to Fitzgerald, teams that cut or trade players prior to June 1 with post-June 1 designations are allowed to defer the salary-cap ramifications to the 2026 league year (which begins in March 2026).

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