JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Marqise Lee could never stay healthy for the Jaguars and the team released him on Monday as their roster teardown continues.
Lee missed all of 2018 after a devastating preseason knee injury and played in only six games last year before going on injured reserve with a shoulder injury. Lee will count $8.75 million against the Jaguars’ salary cap in 2020, another painful financial reminder of a contract that didn’t pan out.
The Jaguars signed Lee to a four-year contract extension in 2018, a deal worth $34 million with $16.5 million in guarantees. They opted to keep Lee instead of Allen Robinson during that cycle and it wound up as another bad miscalculation by Jacksonville’s front office.
Lee suffered ACL, MCL and PCL tears in his left knee during a preseason game in 2018 and went on IR last year with a shoulder injury.
Robinson was coming off of an ACL injury of his own and signed a three-year, $42 million deal with Chicago. He has 153 catches for 1,901 yards and 11 touchdowns since signing that deal. In that same span, Lee had three catches for 18 yards and missed 26 of a possible 32 games.
Among the 22 starters from the Jaguars’ 2017 appearance in the AFC championship game, only nine of those remain on the team.
Six of those are on offense — A.J. Cann, Leonard Fournette, Brandon Linder, James O’Shaugnessy, Cam Robinson and Dede Westbrook. Among the three defensive holdovers are Myles Jack, Abry Jones and Yannick Ngakoue. Fournette and Ngakoue have been the subjects of trade rumors.