UDFA making it 'really difficult' for Jaguars during roster cutdowns

Jacksonville Jaguars' edge rusher Bryan Thomas Jr. is giving Liam Coen and James Gladstone a lot to think about with roster cutdown day looming.

In the Jaguars ' preseason finale against Tampa Bay, Thomas logged five pressures, according to Pro Football Focus, and he was in on three sacks.

"His play style is the right way," Coen said afterward. "It fits a lot of the things that we preach and that we're about as a team. When you have a gift of rushing the passer, man, it's something that you can't ignore. I thought he did some nice things against the run as well tonight. I thought the defense as a whole, obviously with the shutout, was huge, being led by Bryan. He's making it really difficult, which is a good thing. It's just what we're hunting up. He's had that skill set. That was something we really appreciated about his game. He's just continued to do it on this stage."

Despite Thomas' impressive performance, he does still face an uphill battle when it comes to making the 53-man roster. The defensive end group is quite crowded in front of him.

Keeping a seventh defensive end probably isn't in the cards, given the roster impact elsewhere. Has Thomas shown enough to jump Zach Durfee on the depth chart? That's the question that Gladstone and Coen will have to ask themselves.

While preseason performance carries the most weight, for what it's worth, Ryan O'Halloran of the Florida Times-Union posted on X that throughout training camp, he didn't "write down" Thomas' name a lot as those practices unfolded.

The Jaguars signed Thomas after the 2026 draft as a UDFA.