Yannick Ngakoue Jags’ lone pending free agent on PFF’s top-50 list

The Jags had one player to grade out as a top free agent in 2019 per PFF and that was DE Yannick Ngakoue, who the team must retain.

With a busy offseason coming up for the league, Pro Football Focus has completed their top-50 free agents list for 2020.

Fortunately, there was only one player from the Jacksonville Jaguars’ roster who was listed, and of course, that was edge rusher Yannick Ngakoue, who came in at the No. 18 spot.

18. EDGE Yannick Ngakoue

Ngakoue has followed his collegiate profile as a good pass-rusher and below-average run defender (career-high grade of 60.0 in 2018). His best season came in 2017, as he graded at 81.0 overall to go with an 88.2 pass-rush grade and 82 total pressures (14 sacks, 15 QB hits, 53 hurries). Over the last two years, he’s posted pass-rush grades of 76.8 in 2018 and 77.5 this season, both solid numbers but not at the 2017 level that had Ngakoue looking like the next great pass-rusher in the NFL. At just 25 years old, he looks like a strong presence off the edge for the foreseeable future, but his questionable run defense coupled with the fact that more valuable positions are hitting the open market has us lower on him than most.

Oddly enough, Ngakoue wasn’t listed as a top-7 player but it appears PFF isn’t high on his ability against the run. Personally, I thought he was solid enough in the category to definitely get paid like DeMarcus Lawrence or Frank Clark (a five-year deal guaranteeing around $65 million) but only time will tell if a deal truly happens.

Ngakoue had arguably his best season as a pro in 2019 and that’s despite having a nagging hamstring injury earlier in the year. He ultimately finished the season with a career-high of 41 tackles and eight sacks.

Coming into the offseason general manager Dave Caldwell said Ngakoue would be the team’s No. 1 priority in the offseason. With the team losing a franchise player like Jalen Ramsey in 2019, it would be wise to keep Ngakoue, especially when considering the amount of needs the Jags already have.