Jags’ strip sack master wants to change game
Ngakoue’s knack for knocking ball loose terrorizes QBs.
Pity JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — the poor equipment manager tasked with simulating the quarterback when the strip-sack drill starts at Jaguars practice. The defensive linemen are not supposed to actually smack the ball out. They’re supposed to just swipe at it since it’s, you know, practice, and it’s an equipment manager back there and not, you know, a real quarterback. Everyone generally understands this.
Yannick Ngakoue does, too, but then the whistle blows, and he comes springing around the corner. He sees the ball, held aloft or at waist level or near the ground, and reacts as if hypnotized.
Must. Get. Ball.
“He almost dislocates some of their shoulders,” defensive coordinator Todd Wash said of the equipment managers, pausing for a beat. “They prefer not to do that drill.”
Ngakoue has not emerged as the NFL’s premier stripsack artist, logging more since his rookie season of 2016 than anyone else in the league, by slacking in practice or shirking preparation or showing mercy. The act of separating quarterback from ball, as demoralizing as it is violent, is a skill desired by many but mastered by few. For Ngakoue, it is an obsession.
“Everybody wants to be a leader in sacks, everybody wants to be a sack king,” Ngakoue said, lounging on a couch in the club level of TIAA Bank Field after practice last week. “I want to change the game.”
He envisions himself transforming the sport, becoming — his words — the next Lawrence Taylor or the next Derrick Thomas, pass-rushing gurus whose highlights Ngakoue devours. He knows how good they were. He thinks he knows how good he will be.
“I think it’s just a matter of time before he’s the best pass rusher in the league,” veteran defensive lineman Calais Campbell said.
On a micro level, Ngakoue, 23, views every moment within a game as a chance for destruction, to make the quarterback regret ever signing up for Pop Warner, to demand broadcasters announce his name — yahNEEK in-GAHK-way — play after play after play.
A sack alters a drive, pushing the offense back or coercing a punt or a longer field goal. But Ngakoue recognizes that a strip sack — when the defense recovers the resulting fumble — deflates the opposition. Sometimes, as when Brandon Graham of the Philadelphia Eagles swatted the ball from the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady late in the Super Bowl, it can even secure a championship.
To Ngakoue, the best feeling in the world comes after a strip sack when he sees his own quarterback, Blake Bortles, smile, knowing the Jaguars just regained possession. Counting the postseason, Ngakoue has 21 career sacks, of which 10 have knocked the ball free; four of those were returned for touchdowns. One came in last year’s season opener in Houston, where he victimized Tom Savage twice — in the second quarter.
Ngakoue has forced as many regular-season fumbles as Khalil Mack, the Bears’ edge-rusher extraordinaire, in about half as many games. Von Miller of Denver, whose clips Ngakoue would watch before college games at Maryland and still mines for pointers, has never had as many as six strip sacks in a season, as Ngakoue did in 2017.
“You’re coached about the ball all the time, but some guys just have that gift,” Jaguars defensive line coach Marion Hobby said. “They’re just so natural in getting the ball out.”
Ngakoue’s proficiency in the NFL helps allay the guilt from college, where despite setting Maryland’s single-season sacks record, he would tackle the quarterback but not go for the ball. Once, in the fourth quarter against South Florida, Ngakoue had a clean shot but went for the legs, allowing the quarterback to get rid of the ball, and it still bothers him.
Many things still bother Ngakoue, who smolders with such intensity that some teammates, at first, thought it was a persona he adopted to psych himself up.
“You tell him to calm down,” defensive lineman Abry Jones said, “and he’ll look at you like you’re speaking a different language.”
Taken No. 69 overall, as part of a Jacksonville draft bonanza that also netted cornerback Jalen Ramsey and linebacker Myles Jack, Ngakoue tramples the traditional profile of an elite pass rusher. Of the 77 active players with at least 20 career sacks, only 14 have averaged more per game than Ngakoue’s 0.61, according to Pro Football Reference. Of those 14, all but Ngakoue and Justin Houston of Kansas City were first-round draft picks.
Ngakoue dropped in the draft, Wash, the Jaguars’ defensive coordinator, theorized, because teams viewed him as undersized, at 6-foot-2 and 242 pounds. But to Wash, Ngakoue was perfect for Jacksonville’s system, a smaller but speedy end who is tough enough to stop the run.
“Everyone worries about these numbers, and you can justify these numbers,” Wash said of Ngakoue’s measurements. “To me, it’s about the game speed, and he plays at a very fast pace.”
In practice, Jones said, Ngakoue stalks around talking to himself. He admonishes. He encourages. He vows to improve. In drills, he goes first, always first.