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Report: There 'Remains Some Interest' Among Teams in Trading for Jaguars' Yannick Ngakoue

Ian Rapoport of NFL Network reported Tuesday morning that Yannick Ngakoue is still on the watchlist of some NFL teams.

If any NFL team wants to sign Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end Yannick Ngakoue this offseason, the clock is quickly ticking. But as Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says, deadlines make deals. 

With the July 15 deadline to sign a franchise tagged player to a multi-year extension a little over a day away, teams could still sniff around the idea of trading for the 25-year-old former Pro Bowler. And according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, "there remains some interest around the NFL" in trading for Ngakoue. 

If the Jaguars were going to take a middling offer for Ngakoue and not reap the benefits of major compensation, it is likely Ngakoue would have already been traded by now. Instead, the Jaguars are likely hoping to get prime compensation for a player with 37.5 sacks and 14 forced fumbles since being drafted in the third round in 2016.

Once 4 p.m. eastern time on Wednesday passes, however, Ngakoue will be forced to either play the 2020 season on the tag or simply not play the season; any hope for a long-term deal with security would have to be pushed to next season. And if that happens, it wouldn't make much sense for the Jaguars to trade Ngakoue since his value would be greatly diminished by the inability of a team to sign him to a multi-year deal. 

For context of how trading a franchise tagged player before or after this deadline can impact compensation, look at three trades from last offseason. Hee is the compensation the Houston Texans got for Jadeveon Clowney, who was traded after the deadline, compared to the compensation the Kansas City Chiefs and Seattle Seahawks got for Dee Ford and Frank Clark following their trading of the franchise-tagged players earlier in the same offseason.

  • Texans' haul for Clowney (traded on Aug. 31): OLB Jacob Martin, OLB Barkevious Mingo, and a third-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.
  • Chiefs' haul for Ford (traded on March 12): Second-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.
  • Seahawks' haul for Clark (traded on April 23): First- and third-round picks in the 2019 NFL Draft and a second-round pick in 2020.

Ngakoue has been pushing for the Jaguars to trade him all offseason after the team failed to sign him to a long-term extension during the 2019 offseason. Ngakoue has made consistent public demands, as well as engaging in a spat with co-owner Tony Khan over Twitter. 

Still, there has been little to zero momentum on any Ngakoue trade all spring and summer. Perhaps the deadline Wednesday could change that, but thus far it appears as if the trade talks have been quiet.

"As far as that goes, I try not to comment too much on the situation. I try to be very pragmatic about it. Truth be told, we exercised the franchise tender. We weren’t able to get a trade. Actually, weren’t even really able to get an offer," Jaguars general manager Dave Caldwell said following the first round of the NFL Draft in April.

"So, I think his options are very limited at this point in time. We’ll welcome him back with open arms when he’s ready to come back and we look forward to it. Yann, for the people on this call and who have been around him realize he is a tremendous player, tremendous person, has always been first-class in everything he’s done here in the locker room and through his time here, the first four years of his contract. Obviously, he feels things have not gone the way he wanted and, in some aspects, he may have a point. But we put our best foot forward not once, but twice. I hope he sees the light that Jacksonville is a good spot and it could, at the end of the day, be his only option.”