Tom Coughlin cut off negotiations early with Yannick Ngakoue

As we get further and further from the firing of EVP of Football Operations Tom Coughlin, more and more comes out about issues various players had with him. It goes beyond just frivolous and petty fines however, as according to Albert Breer of SI.com, one of the big issues over the summer with pass rusher Yannick Ngakoue was with Coughlin

Just before training camp last summer, Coughlin declared that the Jags had made their final and best offer to pass-rusher Yannick Ngakoue. The problem? It was late July, and negotiations were still in the early stages, having only started earlier that month. And the comments sufficiently angered Ngakoue, who was planning on reporting to training camp, to the point where he launched a training camp holdout instead. And this was a player that the team wanted to sign.

As everyone knows, Ngakoue skipped some voluntary workouts and ultimately came back for them, but just before training camp there was a sudden change in Ngakoue and he didn’t report. It was counter to what he said after skipping a few days earlier in the offseason about how he was going to show up for everything.

Well, now we know why there was a sudden change of heart; Tom Coughlin cut off negotiations seemingly because Ngakoue didn’t take the initial early offer.

As Breer noted, Ngakoue is someone the team wanted to re-sign, so it seems wild that they would be so combative early in the process of working out a contract and more or less pull the offer and is likely why the “details” of the offer got leaked to make it look like Ngakoue’s asking point was just unreasonably high.