The Detroit Lions will start up training camp next week. Usually around this time, teams will bring in some players to give a shot at camp. There's one player that's been sitting in free agency far too long and his name is Yannick Ngakoue.

Ngakoue went on Good Morning Football on Friday and said he'd be open to play for any team in the league this coming season. The Lions are a team that could theoretically be a fit since they have a lot of questions on the other side of  Aidan Hutchinson. 

But should the Lions do it? Let's go over some pros and cons shall we? 

Pros

Yannick has played seven years in the NFL and he has registered 8 or more sacks in every single one of them. That's no easy feat. That's something that only guys like Aaron Donald and Reggie White have done. 

As we mentioned earlier, the Lions have a lot of questions on the opposite side of Hutchinson. The big one is who is going to start there? Both Romeo Okwara and Charles Harris seem like the favorites right now, but both are coming off let down seasons for different reasons. James Houston could maybe fill that role, but we've yet to see him really succeed outside of Nascar packages. There's John Comminsky, but he might be better as a guy that can flex in and out. 

Ngakoue is day one starter for the Lions. He can come in and take the opposite side of Hutchinson and give the Lions a very strong pass rush. He's only 28 years old too. So this could theoretically be a long term situation for the Lions. 

Cons

Ngakoue can't seem to find a home. He had a pretty public breakup with the Jaguars. You might remember his Twitter spat with Jaguars owner Shad Kahn's son, and owner of All Elite Wrestling, Tony Kahn. On hand, you don't like to see that. On the other, this was during a time when it seemed like everyone wanted to jump off that ship. 

Nhgakoue has played for four teams in the last three years. The Vikings were the team that took him out of Jacksonville. He played there for six games and racked up five sacks in that time. Then the Vikings moved him to the Ravens at the deadline. Nobody knows why the Vikings made this move. It still seems weird. 

He hit free agency the following offseason and chose the Raiders. He played there the entire 2021 season and got 10 sacks. The Raiders then signed Chandler Jones and traded Ngakoue to the Colts. He got 9.5 sacks there last season. 

Why are teams not holding onto this guy? Why is he still a free agent? What do we not know here? What we can at least see is that he has been a consistently productive player and he's still in his 20's. Why is he not on a team? That gives pause for sure. 

My verdict:

I'm going with yes. Outside of the Tony Kahn thing, there really hasn't been much public that makes me think that Ngakoue is a problem child outside of being moved a few times. I don't think that's a deal breaker for the Lions anyways. They want guys that want to play football and having a little bit of an edge doesn't hurt. 

The pairing just makes too much sense. The Lions are an up and coming team that has stability. Which is something Ngakoue is reportedly interested in. They also have a young running mate for him, so he's not going to be asked to do all the work. I think the Lions should look into this. 

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