The Jacksonville Jaguars entered Monday at 6-2, leading the AFC South by three games and allowing 15.1 points per game, second-fewest in the NFL. Then general manager James Gladstone made three trades in one day and sent a 2027 first-round pick out the door for a defensive tackle with 1.5 sacks.
That tackle is Jordan Davis, acquired from the Philadelphia Eagles for a 2027 first and a 2029 second. Jacksonville also got safety Jessie Bates III from the Atlanta Falcons for a 2027 second and a 2028 fifth, plus veteran Davon Godchaux from the New Orleans Saints for a conditional 2028 sixth.
Two of those are good trades. The third is the one Jaguars fans will be arguing about next April.
Jordan Davis Cost More Than Jessie Bates Did
Davis is 26, listed at 6-foot-6 and 336 pounds, and went 13th overall to Philadelphia in 2022. He has 31 tackles and 1.5 sacks in nine games this season while playing 52 percent of the Eagles’ defensive snaps. He is a real run defender. His run stop win rate sits in the 71st percentile among interior defenders, and since 2022 he ranks fifth among qualified interior linemen in that category.
He also cannot rush the passer. ESPN has his pass rush win rate in the 12th percentile or worse in each of the last three seasons. Jacksonville inherits the three-year, $78 million extension he signed in March, carrying $18.4 million in 2027 and $26 million in each of the two years after that.
ESPN’s Seth Walder graded the trade an F for the Jaguars and an A for the Eagles. His verdict: “This trade is a disaster for Jacksonville.”
The Bates Trade Is the Opposite
Bates is 29 and turns 30 in February, and he has been among the best safeties in football for most of a decade. He has 28 career interceptions, three Second-Team All-Pro selections and a 2023 Pro Bowl nod, and he has missed three games in nine seasons.
This year he has 60 tackles, an interception, four passes defensed, three forced fumbles and a fumble-return touchdown in nine games. He is in the final year of the four-year, $64 million deal he signed with Atlanta in 2023, on a $6.5 million salary that NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport reported the Falcons are largely paying themselves. Jacksonville had $4.3 million in cap room before Monday. That discount is how any of this happened.
“Jessie has been a proven playmaker on the defensive side of the ball for the last eight-plus seasons,” Gladstone said. “His skill set complements our style of play and the person he is aligns with our culture.”
Head coach Liam Coen was shorter about it: “We got better today.”
The Problem They Were Actually Solving
Jacksonville’s defense ranks second in EPA allowed per play and third in EPA allowed per designed run, and it is still 31st in run stop win rate at 25.7 percent. Only the Jets are worse. Starting defensive tackle DaVon Hamilton is out for the season with a torn quad. Davis and Godchaux answer that directly, and Godchaux cost close to nothing: a conditional sixth, with the Jaguars paying $650,000 of his $1.3 million salary.
So the logic holds up. The price is the problem. Jacksonville had no first-round pick in 2026 because it traded up for Travis Hunter, and now it has no first in 2027 either, with ESPN listing the team at negative $15 million against next year’s cap.
Their Super Bowl odds moved from +850 to +750 at DraftKings after the trades, third-shortest in the league, and ESPN’s FPI gives them a 12.8 percent title chance, second-highest of any team. Tennessee, at 1-7, is next.
Gladstone has bet the 2027 draft on this roster winning right now. If the Jaguars do not reach a conference championship game, the Jordan Davis trade is the thing everybody points at.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
