John Franklin-Myers, one of the NFL’s most effective pass-rushing defensive linemen, joined the Cool Your Jets podcast to break down his game film and plenty more.
The NFL’s number one interior defensive linemen in terms of pressure rate this past season? Unsurprisingly, that would be Aaron Donald, who created pressure on 18.1% of his pass-rush snaps in 2020, according to Pro Football Focus.
The league’s second-best pressure producer on the interior in 2020? That would be a former pupil of Donald’s – the New York Jets’ own John Franklin-Myers (15.6% pressure rate).
A 2018 fourth-round pick out of Stephen F. Austin, Franklin-Myers had a promising rookie season as a 5-technique defensive end playing alongside Donald. He recorded a 12.4% pressure rate that ranked at the 71st percentile among qualified edge defenders.
Surprisingly, Franklin-Myers was cut the following offseason. Joe Douglas scooped him up and brought him to New York.
After missing the entire 2019 season due to an injury he sustained with Los Angeles, Franklin-Myers came out in 2020 and set the league ablaze with his hyper-efficient production, establishing himself as one of the best young pieces on the Jets roster.
Throughout his breakout season, Franklin-Myers played primarily on the interior, frequently lining up at either 3-technique or 2i-technique – two positions he had never played prior to 2020.
Franklin-Myers joined Ben Blessington and Michael Nania on the Cool Your Jets podcast to discuss his NFL journey, ascending from never winning a game in high school to becoming the highest-drafted player from Stephen F. Austin in 20 years, learning from Donald and Ndamukong Suh throughout a Super Bowl run in Los Angeles, and blossoming into a tremendous young player alongside Quinnen Williams in New York.
Along the way, Franklin-Myers breaks down film clips of his best moments as a Jet.
Some more of the topics discussed by Franklin-Myers:
- The importance of a high-quality culture to achieving team success, and how Joe Douglas has put the Jets on the path to building just that
- As a player competing for a roster spot, the difficult balance between helping teammates but not allowing them to get a leg up on you
- His willingness to share advice with teammates even if they might take his spot, and how important that is to establish a winning culture
- Thoughts on the Robert Saleh hiring and the highly encouraging things he has heard about Saleh from 49ers players
- How he uses his superior quickness and athleticism to take advantage of bulky interior offensive linemen
- An extremely subtle way that Quinnen Williams teed up a big play for him
- Persevering through 2019 after being cut and missing the entire season
- Playing in front of no fans in the strange 2020 season
- Making a strip-sack on Tom Brady in Super Bowl 53
*Jet X subscribers can view the film breakdown and interview in its entirety at the bottom of this page.
*Directly below, you can see a portion of the video breakdown on YouTube and listen to the full audio version.
Subscribers can view the entirety of John Franklin-Myers’ film breakdown and interview below (subscribe here to get your first month free):
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@ben, you’re wearing my favorite sweater. I’ve had it for years and wear it every Sunday 🙂
Great episode!
dope discussion man. JFM is so underrated
He was an awesome guest! And yes, he doesn’t get the love he deserves because of the sack totals, but sacks are such a misleading stat. He creates pressure at a superstar-caliber level. He was great in 2020 and I expect him to continue thriving in the league for a long time. Hopefully that’s with the Jets. Maybe the sacks and big plays come to earn him household-name recognition, maybe they don’t, but either way, his profound impact will be there whether he gets talked about on ESPN or not.