Bears Trade Pitch Flips $10.5 Million D-End for Draft Haul

The Chicago Bears just signed pass rusher Yannick Ngakoue, but his tenure with the team may not extend through the end of even one season.

During the August 10 edition of The Bill Barnwell Show, the host and podcast’s namesake pitched the notion that Chicago added Ngakoue with two potential paths in mind. The first involves keeping the edge defender through the end of the year, particularly if the Bears are playing well and have a chance to contend in what appears to be a relatively open NFC North Division.

The second revolves around flipping Ngakoue for considerable draft capital ahead of the NFL’s October 31 trade deadline if he and/or the Bears are producing mediocre or below-average campaigns.

I sort of wonder if the Bears see this as a sort of wait-and-see operation. Last year, the Bears went and traded Robert Quinn and traded Roquan Smith in mid-season for draft capital. [They didn’t get] a ton of draft capital for Robert Quinn, but they got a [second-round pick], I believe, from the [Baltimore] Ravens for Roquan Smith.

I wonder from their perspective [if it’s], “Hey, what if we have Yannick Ngakoue, we get like six or seven weeks? He’s a pass rusher, we need one of those.” [They] have vague plans, they’re not expecting to win, but they hope to contend. If they get off to a hot start, Ngakoue is playing well — “Hey, great. We went out and got a pass rusher.”

But if not, I wonder if they sit here at the trade deadline and say, “Well, everyone needs a pass rusher. Maybe we eat some of the money, we spend some of the contract down, then we get draft capital in return for Ngakoue as opposed to hoping for a [compensatory] pick in an offseason where we’re going to be spending next offseason as well.” From that perspective, I would say I wonder if they’re looking at this as a rental.

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Questions About Yannick Ngakoue Persist After Bears Sign DE

The line between playing well and playing poorly in the first half of the season could be a bit muddled as Chicago evaluates Ngakoue, particularly when it comes to the prospect of trading him.

“The Bears had a really bad pass rush before they signed Ngakoue, I would still say they have a bad pass rush now,” ESPN data analyst Seth Walder told Barnwell during the August 10 podcast. “Ngakoue is a player that gets sacks. His win rates have never been elite, but they’ve always been above-average until last season, when they really dipped to below-average. And he’s not a good run defender. So that’s not the type of player I wanna be betting on.”

The Bears produced just 20 sacks as a team in 2022. Ngakoue put up nearly half that tally by himself with 9.5 sacks last season as a member of the Indianapolis Colts, adding 27 QB pressures along the way, per Pro Football Reference. He has never tallied fewer than eight sacks across seven NFL seasons and earned a Pro-Bowl nod in 2017.

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NFL Insiders Suggest Arden Key May Have Offered Bears Better Value than Yannick Ngakoue

Ngakoue brings the Bears’ defense precisely what it needs in regards to disrupting opposing backfields on passing downs. However, as an incomplete player with one highly valuable NFL skill, his true value to Chicago is liable to be skewed — particularly if he sacks the quarterback but hurts what turns out to be a mediocre or below-average Bears defense through the first half of the year.

In that scenario, trading Ngakoue for value similar to what the Bears brought back for Smith in 2022 could be tricky on both ends of the deal — upsetting fans while also bringing back mid-round draft compensation rather than the return of a high-round draft asset.

For these reasons — among others, such as Ngakoue’s exceedingly poor Pro Football Focus grade of 51.4 last season — Walder questioned the $10.5 million contract offer that the defensive end signed on August 3.

“I was a little surprised at the number at first … to get that kind of money this late is pretty surprising,” Walder said. “It could be worse. It’s not totally crazy. Would I rather have bet on Arden Key for like $8 million — $1 million more than what the [Tennessee] Titans gave him — than Ngakoue for $10.5 [million]? I think I would.”

Barnwell co-signed the assertion that Key probably posed a better solution to the Bears’ pass-rushing woes than did Ngakoue. However, the two ESPN insiders agreed that Chicago would have been required to make a multiyear commitment to Key, as the Titans signed him to a three-year contract worth $21 million. Ngakoue, on the other hand, is just a one-year bet and the two are close to the same age. Key will play the upcoming season at 27 years old, while Ngakoue will play at 28.

“[It was a] bit of a surprise the Bears went out and got a veteran edge rusher,” Barnwell said. “Although, of course, they certainly needed help up front. That was maybe the biggest weakness on their roster.”

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