Brandin Cooks Trade Bumps Jaguars Down a Spot on List of Largest Dead Cap Hits
When the Jacksonville Jaguars traded Nick Foles to the Chicago Bears in March for a 2020 fourth-round pick, they gained draft capital and financial flexibility for the future. But it wasn't all positives.
Instead, they also gained a place atop one list in which no team wants to find itself: the list of the league's largest cap hits. By trading Foles to the Bears, the Jaguars rid themselves of any financial commitments to Foles past 2020, but found themselves on the hook for a massive dead cap hit this season, a figure which amounted to $18.75 million.
This dead cap hit was projected to not only be the largest in the NFL in 2020 but was also the third-largest dead cap hit of all time according to Spotrac.
Or at least it was until Thursday afternoon when the Los Angeles Rams traded wide receiver Brandin Cooks and a 2022 fourth-round selection to the Houston Texans for a 2020 second-round selection (No. 57 overall).
In 2018, Cooks signed a five-year, $81 million contract with the Rams which included $49.459 million in guarantees. Due to his big deal, the Rams are now saddled with a dead cap hit that dwarves the already massive hit the Jaguars are dealing with.
Following the Cooks trade, the Rams are now responsible for a $21.8 million dead cap hit in 2020, the largest in NFL history. This is more than $3 million over the cap hit the Jaguars are due to pay Foles in 2020, bumping the Jaguars down a spot in the list of the largest dead cap hits, moving them to second.
This, of course, doesn't make it any better that the Jaguars will pay Foles nearly $19 million in 2020 to not play for them, but it does give some context in terms of how other teams have been hit with dead cap charges.
The Jaguars trading Foles one year into a massive four-year, $88 million contract can never be spun in a positive way. The team got out of a bad contract, sure, but taking on a massive dead cap hit at quarterback one year after they had done exactly the same thing with Blake Bortles is a reflection of the severe mismanagement of the quarterback position in Jacksonville.
For the Jaguars to turn around their franchise, they will need to make more prudent free agency decisions than the one they made in signing Foles. Sure, trading him gave them an extra pick and opened the door for Gardner Minshew II to be the 2020 starter, but there aren't many positives to a dead cap hit of over $18 million.
The only true positive, aside from unloading Foles' massive deal without having to give up any draft picks, is the fact that the Jaguars are no longer the consummate example in 2020 for brutal dead cap hits. This is only a marginal sliver of positivity, but it is a positive nonetheless.
