In 2017, the Jacksonville Jaguars had the NFL’s best defense. How good was it? The 10-6 Jags got into the playoffs and were one half of football away from beating the Patriots in the AFC Championship game and going on to meet the Eagles in Super Bowl LII… with Blake Bortles as their quarterback. That defense was stacked with six Pro Bowlers — defensive linemen Malik Jackson and Calais Campbell, linebacker Telvin Smith, cornerbacks Jalen Ramsey and A.J. Bouye, and edge rusher Yannick Ngakoue.
As of Sunday morning, all six of those Pro Bowlers are gone. Ngakoue, who was the last man standing and had expressed his desire to be off the Jaguars roster for months, was traded on Sunday morning to the Vikings. ESPN’s Adam Schefter was the first with the details.
Jaguars agreed to trade franchise DE Yannick Ngakoue to Minnesota for a second- and conditional fifth-round pick that could go as high a third-round pick, league sources tell ESPN. Ngakoue still has to sign his tender, but trade is in place and Ngakoue is expected to be a Viking.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) August 30, 2020
The Jaguars had placed the franchise tag on Ngakoue, and he’ll have to sign that to make the trade official. The franchise tag for Ngakoue comes in at $17.8 million, which is all guaranteed, and the Vikings currently have had a little more than $12.5 million to work with, so they’ll have to make room sooner than later. As I wrote this week, offensive tackle Riley Reiff, who has a 2020 cap charge of $13.2 million and is only on the books for $4 million in dead money if released, is a prime candidate for exactly that.
During the last few months, Ngakoue has changed agents, beefed with Jaguars front office personnel on Twitter about his contractual situation, and made it as abundantly clear as possible that whatever positive relationship he had enjoyed with the franchise that selected him in the third round of the 2016 draft out of Maryland was in the past.
Ngakoue now has the different environment he desires, and his addition to the Vikings’ defense should make it quite formidable. Ngakoue had a relatively down year in 2019, but most teams would take eight sacks and 51 total pressures from their top edge-rusher, and Ngakoue isn’t even Minnesota’s top edge-rusher. That would be Danielle Hunter, who had 14.5 sacks and 102 total pressures in 2019 — only Green Bay’s Za’Darius Smith had more among edge defenders last season with 105. The Vikings also have the NFL’s best safety tandem with Harrison Smith and Anthony Harris, and one of the league’s best linebackers in Eric Kendricks. If the Vikings can get their shaky cornerback situation worked out with rookies Jeff Gladney and Cameron Dantzler, they should have a top-five defense.
As for the Jaguars, the mass exodus on defense has been as debilitating as it is perplexing. Last season, they ranked 29th in Defensive DVOA — quite a drop from that first overall spot just three full seasons ago. Though they have an estimable edge guy in 2019 rookie Josh Allen, there isn’t much else to go on, as the team has so far failed to replace with similar potential those Pro Bowl players they could not retain.
As for the Vikings, this is a Super Bowl-or-bust move. Not because of the draft capital, but because you don’t make this kind of trade without the intention to sign the player involved to a long-term contract. That signing will bring some cap relief in that there’s no way general manager Rick Spielman will agree to a contract that front-loads the money anywhere near Ngakoue’s franchise-tag cap charge. But paying Ngakoue long-term as one of the top 10 edge defenders in the league would likely create a contract with an annual value of around $17 million, and Hunter is already on the books with his own five-year, $72 million deal, signed in 2018. Hunter’s cap charge explodes from $9 million in 2020 to $17.75 million in 2021, which is a season NFL teams are estimating will have a reduced salary cap in line with reduces revenue as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
So, the Vikings now have a truly ferocious edge duo, right up there with the one their division rivals the Packers have in Za’Darius Smith and Preston Smith. The only question now is, what will be the end result?