February 17th is an important date for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Brandon Scherff.
On that day, Scherff, who is currently set to be a free agent this offseason, will have his contract void. At that point, the Jaguars will have to take on $14 million in dead cap for the 2025 season, according to Over the Cap.
Dead cap are dollars that will remain on the current year’s salary cap even if that player is playing elsewhere.
The reason that Scherff has so much dead cap is because of the contract restructure that was completed last offseason and utilized four void years.
Void years are essentially fake years added to a contract for salary cap purposes. Those added years are not a contract extension, but rather they allow teams a longer runway to spread salary cap charges out.
The benefit in the now is that it lowers a player’s current cap hit. The downside, however, is that when the contract terminates down the road, all of those cap charges that were pushed to the void years accelerate and come due on the salary cap books.
To avoid this, the Jaguars and Scherff can agree to an extension before February 17th, which would allow the team to then spread those cap charges out over the life of the deal, rather than taking it all on this year.
Once that February 17th date passes, if a new deal hasn’t been reached, the Jaguars are still able to re-sign Scherff. However, at that point, in addition to taking on the cap hit from the new deal, that aforementioned dead cap hit of $14 million is still on the books as well.
So if an extension isn’t reach soon, then it probably becomes more likely that Scherff won’t be returning.
Given that the Jaguars’ offensive line play has to improve, there is value in bringing back Scherff and his experience. However, there’s also a financial motivation for the Jaguars to bring him back as well.
