One of the New York Jets’ young defensive linemen seems to be a popular trade target
Whenever an NFL team is loaded with depth at one particular position, other teams will inevitably come calling in hopes that they can acquire one of the players in the unit who are being buried.
The New York Jets have one of the NFL’s deepest defensive lines. Because of the unit’s unusually strong depth, the Jets will be unable to give every player the snap count they deserve.
This has resulted in trade offers for 25-year-old edge rusher Bryce Huff.
According to Zack Rosenblatt of The Athletic, teams have been calling the Jets about Huff this offseason, although it does not seem like a deal is anywhere close to happening.
“I’ve heard that teams have called the Jets about trading for Huff this offseason, though nothing has materialized,” says Rosenblatt.
Surely, the Jets would want to get a significant return for Huff, who is one of the league’s most dangerous pass rushers on a per-snap basis. In 2022, Huff recorded 36 pressures on just 173 pass rush snaps, giving him a pressure rate of 20.8% that led all edge rushers. His 25.6% pass-rush win rate also led the position.
Huff only logged 191 defensive snaps in 14 games (13.6 snaps per game), taking the field for a minuscule 20% of the Jets’ defensive snaps in those 14 games. This is because New York only placed Huff on the field in obvious passing situations. Opponents passed the ball on 175 of Huff’s 191 snaps. The Jets avoided using Huff in any situation where a run play was likely.
After his stellar performance in 2022, it seemed Huff was poised to receive more snaps in 2023. However, Huff’s path to a bigger role in the Jets’ defense became even tougher when the team selected Will McDonald in the first round of the draft, adding yet another talented player into the edge rotation.
Huff, a 2020 undrafted free agent out of Memphis, was a restricted free agent entering 2023. The Jets retained him on a second-round tender, which will pay him $4.3 million this season. Huff will become an unrestricted free agent in 2024.
