5 Free Agents NY Giants HC Joe Judge would love

3. DE Yannick Ngakoue

Ngakoue is the dream for most NY Giants fans this offseason and is a great player for this Big Blue Giants defense to build around as it heads into the future. The young pass rusher already has 37.5 career sacks and will only be 25 at the start of the 2020 season, meaning he has plenty of upside over the next five years.

He is coming off a down year, just about halving the pressures he had from last year with 27 compared to the 51(!?) he had in 2018 and about 17 less than the 44 Markus Golden had in 2019. A lot of this could come down to the fact that Ngakoue skipped training camp and minicamp until August 4th, due to contract disputes. Before this season, Ngakoue’s pass-rush grade ranked 8th in the league over the past two seasons at 90.2.

The one big downside that comes with Ngakoue is his sub-par run defense as he as yet to pass a 60.0 run defense grade in his first three seasons, so he remains one dimensional, even though that dimension is very valuable. He is projected to command an estimated 17.1 million dollar per year contract, which the Giants have the cap room to pay with a projected cap room of about 70 million. The star pass rusher should be the biggest priority for the Giants this offseason.