JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Pity the poor equipment manager tasked with simulating the quarterback when the strip-sack drill starts at Jaguars practice. The defensive linemen are not supposed to actually smack the ball out. They’re supposed to just swipe at it since it’s, you know, practice, and it’s an equipment manager back there and not, you know, a real quarterback. Everyone generally understands this.

Yannick Ngakoue does, too, but then the whistle blows, and he comes springing around the corner. He sees the ball, held aloft or at waist level or near the ground, and reacts as if hypnotized.

Must. Get. Ball.

“He almost dislocates some of their shoulders,” defensive coordinator Todd Wash said of the equipment managers, pausing for a beat. “They prefer not to do that drill.”

Ngakoue has not emerged as the N.F.L.’s premier strip-sack artist, logging more since his rookie season of 2016 than anyone else in the league, by slacking in practice or shirking preparation or showing mercy. The act of separating quarterback from ball, as demoralizing as it is violent, is a skill desired by many but mastered by few. For Ngakoue, it is an obsession.