LA Chargers: Four reasons to re-sign Melvin Ingram

Melvin Ingram will be a free agent after the 2020 season, but the LA Chargers should make an attempt to re-sign him.

Throughout the offseason, Melvin Ingram has been subject to trade ideas and rumors. After the Joey Bosa extension two weeks ago, the idea of trading Ingram was brought up again. If anything though, the Bosa contract should make the Chargers want to keep Ingram more.

Ingram has been a vital part of the defense for the last 8 seasons. In his Chargers career, he’s racked up 49 sacks and 350 tackles. Oh, and he’s been a Pro Bowler in each of the last three seasons. Simply put, Ingram is a huge reason that the Chargers’ defense tends to rank near the top of the league every year.

1. Melvin Ingram is still near the top of his game.

Perhaps it would be a different conversation if Ingram was showing some serious signs of decline from year to year. In 2020, Ingram had seven sacks, 48 tackles, and 11 tackles for loss. This was with missing three games with a hamstring as well, so he surpassed most of his 2018 stats while playing fewer games.

Advanced stats also bear out the fact that 2019 was one of Ingram’s better seasons. In tackling, pass rush, and overall defensive grade, Ingram was about four points better than his 2018 season in PFF score.

While it’s possible that Ingram could start to show some signs of decline in 2020, it’s pretty unlikely given the consistency of his last three seasons and his style of play. Injuries might be a concern given that he missed three games with a hamstring in 2019, but a pulled hamstring isn’t a cause for that much concern.

I’d say Ingram has at least two or three years left at his peak based on his track record in the last few seasons. If that’s true, signing him to a three or four-year deal is still very reasonable. Letting Ingram walk with his current skill set would be the wrong move, barring the Chargers having a notable replacement in mind.