Bryce who?
As the national and local media lampooned the New York Jets for letting Bryce Huff walk amid Haason Reddick’s holdout, they missed the point.
Letting Huff walk was certainly not ideal, but it wasn’t the Jets’ main problem, Reddick or no Reddick. In fact, the Jets could have let Huff walk, kept their defensive line otherwise intact, and still expected another strong season.
Whether or not it was Woody Johnson who vetoed a contract offer to Huff, that wasn’t Joe Douglas’ chief mistake. Rather, it was the move he made after he added Reddick that was the nail in his coffin.
If picking up John Franklin-Myers on waivers was Douglas’ best move as the Jets’ general manager, dumping Franklin-Myers for a measly 2026 sixth-round pick was his worst.
Many Jets fans were puzzled at the time but mostly let it go with a shrug. It didn’t rate national media notice at all. Most in the media probably still don’t know his name. After all, a trade of a player who has never had more than six sacks in a season is usually a blip on the radar.
Oh, but Franklin-Myers was far more important to the Jets than that. We at Jets X-Factor knew it. And the Denver Broncos very gladly benefited from an extremely lopsided trade — more lopsided than even we expected, but perhaps no more lopsided than we should have expected.
At 289 pounds, Franklin-Myers is a classic “tweener” — too big to be a true edge defender but too small to play inside. He is far quicker than typical guards but far stronger than tackles.
Therefore, as a general rule, he is a far better pass rusher inside (where he can use his quickness to get around the clunkier guards) but a better edge run defender (where he can use his size and strength to dominate tight ends and maintain leverage against tackles).
When coached by Gregg Williams in 2020, Franklin-Myers wasn’t quite a starter (48% snap share) and played far more on passing downs. The Jets used him mostly as an interior defender, where he lined up on 76.4% of his snaps. He flourished in that role; according to NFL Next Gen Stats, he ranked fourth among 61 interior defenders (min. 250 pass rush snaps) with a 13.1% pressure rate that season.
Franklin-Myers wasn’t great as a run defender that year, but he wasn’t asked to do it too much. He had just 143 run defense snaps and posted a 57.1 Pro Football Focus run defense grade, ranking 64th out of 104 qualifiers (min. 140 run defense snaps).
Then, Robert Saleh joined the Jets and changed Franklin-Myers’ positional usage. Rather than playing primarily as an interior defender, Franklin-Myers shifted to primary usage as an edge defender. He continued to move inside on passing downs, playing about a two-to-one ratio of edge snaps to interior snaps.
Franklin-Myers’ run defense took a leap, as he posted grades of 75.5 and 76.8 in the next two seasons (before taking a hit in 2023 to 64.3, which did not match his still-excellent film). However, his pass rush took a significant dip relative to his position; he posted pressure rates of 12.5% (29th/79), 11.1% (41st/78), and 12.7% (35th/74) over the next three seasons.
In other words, Franklin-Myers was an elite interior pass rusher and a subpar (but not atrocious) interior run defender. Meanwhile, he was an excellent edge run defender and an average to slightly above average edge pass rusher.
After Huff walked, the Jets still would have had Franklin-Myers and Jermaine Johnson as their edge defenders. That’s a solid but not elite run-defending and pass-rushing duo. For some reason, Douglas decided it wasn’t good enough. He acquired Reddick despite the risk involved with the contract situation.
But even having acquired Reddick, Douglas still had several options for handling Franklin-Myers. He could have kept JFM as part of the defensive line rotation, bolstering the Jets’ run defense on the edge on run downs and the interior pass rush on passing downs.
Since JFM had played 57% and 55% of the Jets’ defensive snaps in the previous two seasons, they could have kept him at around that rate and still fit in Reddick and Johnson around him.
In another scenario, the Jets could have moved Franklin-Myers back to his 2020 interior defensive line position. Although they signed Javon Kinlaw for $7.5 million, Kinlaw had not proven much in the NFL. Meanwhile, the Jets had a player on the roster who already had an elite season as an interior rusher and continued to provide significant juice there when he rotated in.
Additionally, if the Jets were worried about run defense, Franklin-Myers’ interior run defense was superior to Kinlaw’s, albeit in a small sample size. Compare his 57.1 PFF run defense grade on 143 snaps to Kinlaw’s 31.3 mark on 152 snaps in 2023. Franklin-Myers could have hardly been worse than Kinlaw.
Although Douglas understandably did not want to give up on his $7.5 million investment, it would have made far more sense to move Franklin-Myers inside full-time next to Quinnen Williams. What a pass-rushing defensive line (at least on paper) that could have been — Johnson (and then Will McDonald), Williams, Franklin-Myers, and Reddick.
Instead, Douglas inexplicably unloaded Franklin-Myers to the Denver Broncos for pennies on the dollar. ESPN’s Rich Cimini had warned that Franklin-Myers was the odd man out following the Reddick trade, and it came to pass during the draft. All the Jets received in return was a 2026 sixth-round pick — essentially the value of a seventh-round pick.
This for one of the Jets’ most versatile, durable, vital, underrated defensive players. It was clearly a salary dump, as Franklin-Myers was set to make $13.3 million in 2024.
To add insult to injury, though, Franklin-Myers and the Broncos almost immediately agreed to a two-year, $15 million adjusted contract. Would the Jets not have kept Franklin-Myers for $7.5 million per year?! That’s what I (and many others) wondered, but Franklin-Myers answered that question in a post on X.
This was completely shocking. The Jets were not willing to offer their starting defensive end a two-year, $15 million deal with $7.9 million guaranteed? Ironically, the Jets actually lost $1.592 million in 2024 salary cap space by trading Franklin-Myers (with the accompanying dead cap hit) rather than giving him the same deal Denver did.
At the time, the only thing I could come up with was that Franklin-Myers would have refused to sign an equivalent deal with the Jets. I thought that he wanted the opportunity to be a full-time player, perhaps more than the 55% snap share the Jets gave him in 2023. Cimini agreed it was a possibility when he came on my podcast.
However, that proved to be inaccurate, as well. Franklin-Myers played 46% of the Broncos’ snaps this season, and that seemed to have been the plan from the outset.
So why on earth did Douglas make that trade? It simply defies reason.
And boy, did it come back to bite the Jets.
According to NGS, Franklin-Myers led 65 qualified defensive tackles (min. 250 pass rush snaps) with a 12.5% pressure rate in 2024. His 2% sack rate ranked seventh, and his career-high 7 sacks ranked 10th. He also had the eighth-quickest time to pressure (2.76 seconds) and ranked fourth in quick quarterback pressures (19). He got home, and he got home in a hurry.
Meanwhile, the Jets languished with Kinlaw, whose 6.9% pressure rate ranked 42nd out of 65 qualifiers. He had 4.5 sacks (T-26th), a 3.22-second time to pressure (50th), and 6 quick quarterback pressures (T-39th).
Once again, Franklin-Myers didn’t play many run defense snaps (160), and his 58.2 PFF run defense grade was very similar to his mark the last time he played inside in 2020. Meanwhile, Kinlaw’s run defense snaps ratcheted up to 294, but despite posting the best PFF run defense grade of his career, he was still poor (50.8) — and still worse than Franklin-Myers.
In other words, the results of the trade were as predictable as they could possibly be. Franklin-Myers continued to be an elite interior pass rusher. Kinlaw went back to being a below-average interior pass rusher. Neither one is a good interior run defender, but Kinlaw is so bad that Franklin-Myers’ production or lack thereof hardly matters.
Joe Douglas gave away one of the Jets’ most useful players for absolutely nothing. There was every way in the world to keep him. Whether they wanted to continue to use him as an edge defender or move him to the interior full-time, he would have helped their defense tremendously in 2024.
This one was obvious. And, without any fanfare, Douglas blew it.
