Under normal circumstances, a player not making the NFL Pro Bowl isn’t much of a story. There are lots of players that don’t make the Pro Bowl, particularly this year when there won’t be any injury substitutes or anything like that due to the game being played virtually. In this case, however, there is some importance to a player not being named to the squad, and it involves the Minnesota Vikings.
As we informed you a few weeks ago, fans of several teams, led by the Jacksonville Jaguars, were attempting to put together an effort to get former Vikings’ defensive end Yannick Ngakoue into the Pro Bowl. The reasoning for this has to do with the trade the Vikings made with the Jaguars for Ngakoue prior to the start of the regular season, which saw them send a 2021 second-round pick and a conditional 2022 fifth-round pick to Jacksonville for what turned out to be six weeks of Ngakoue’s services.
The conditions surrounding that pick involved Ngakoue’s status as a Pro Bowler. Had Ngakoue made the Pro Bowl, that pick would have gone up to a fourth-round selection. However, with the Pro Bowl rosters being released last night, Ngakoue was not on the list of players that will be part of the game this season, meaning that the pick that the Vikings will send the Jaguars in 2022 will remain a fifth-round selection.
On the season, Ngakoue has eight sacks and, in what might be the saddest stat to come out of this season, still leads the Vikings in sacks with five despite not having suited up for the Vikings since the team’s game against the Atlanta Falcons the week before the bye.