The New York Jets are trading edge rusher Jermaine Johnson II to the Tennessee Titans in exchange for nose tackle T’Vondre Sweat, CBS Sports NFL insider Jonathan Jones confirms. The trade cannot be processed until March, when the new league year begins.
Johnson is a former first-round pick, selected by the Jets with the No. 26 overall pick in 2022 under Robert Saleh. He reunites with Saleh, whom the Titans hired to replace Brian Callahan as coach. The Jets dealt away other first-rounders recently, also shipping off cornerback Sauce Gardner to the Indianapolis Colts and defensive lineman Quinnen Williams to the Dallas Cowboys at the trade deadline.
Johnson played in 14 games for New York last season, starting 13, and finished with 43 combined tackles, including 22 solo tackles, six quarterback hits and 3.0 sacks. In 47 games across four seasons, the 27-year-old has 131 tackles, 27 quarterback hits and 13 sacks. His best season came in 2023, when his career-best 7.5 sacks helped earn him Pro Bowl honors.
Sweat was a 2024 second-round pick of the Titans, recording 85 tackles and three sacks throughout his first two seasons. The Jets had a need to fill when it came to their run defense, as they allowed the fourth-most rushing yards last year (2,371).
The Jets have the No. 2 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft while the Titans hold the fourth selection.
Here are Zach Pereles’ trade grades:
Jets: B+
Sweat is a big, big man — 6-4 and 366 pounds — but he’s more than just heft in the middle. Pro Football Focus rated him as the fifth-best interior defensive lineman in the NFL and the fourth-best against the run in 2025. Though he’s not as much of a pass rusher as his now-former fellow Titans interior defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons, he’s not a complete zero there, either: He had a 9.4% pressure rate, a respectable if not spectacular number. His 74.1 pass rush grade from PFF was 19th out of 112 interior defenders.
Sweat isn’t a full-time player. He played two-thirds of the Titans’ snaps as a rookie, when he appeared in all 17 games, and only about half of their snaps last year. And that number only factors in when he was available; he missed five games due to an ankle injury. That’s why landing in New York makes sense. The Jets don’t have depth at many spots, but they do have it along the interior of the defensive line. Harrison Phillips is a dependable veteran, and former Browns seventh-round pick Jowon Briggs impressed after being acquired over the summer. It’s a solid group for a defense that allowed 46 explosive rushes last year, tied for sixth-most in the NFL.
More than anything, though, the Jets get a strong grade for three reasons. First, Sweat still has two more years remaining on his rookie deal; Johnson only has one, and it’s his fifth-year option. That’s a win for a team in the early days of a rebuild. If Sweat plays well in 2026, he’s still cheap in 2027. Second, Sweat (24) is two-and-a-half years younger than Johnson (27). It’s not a massive differentiating factor, but it is worth mentioning.
Third, the Jets have the No. 2 overall pick in the NFL Draft, and they can clearly set their sights on adding another EDGE defender opposite Will McDonald IV. Arvell Reese leads a strong EDGE group that also includes Rueben Bain and David Bailey. New York, which also has the No. 16 pick (as part of the Gardner trade), the No. 33 pick and the No. 44 pick (as part of the Williams trade) can build in earnest on both sides of the ball. It was a rough first year for Aaron Glenn in the Big Apple, but with a run-stuffing defensive lineman in tow and plenty of draft picks upcoming (including three first-rounders in 2027), brighter days could be ahead.
Titans: B-
Perhaps we should have seen this coming when, Tuesday, Saleh said, “[Sweat’s] a big man, and he has much faster feet that people realize. Is it going to be easy for him? It’s not, it’s a lot of work and it is physically demanding to play d-line in our system.”
The Titans desperately needed pass rush help. After Simmons’ 11 sacks, the team’s sack leaders were Jihad Ward’s (five) and Dre’Mont Jones and Jaylen Harrell’s (4.5). Ward is entering free agency, and Jones was traded midseason to the Ravens.
Whether Johnson can provide that pass-rushing boost is another question. Johnson’s 2023 — under Saleh — was outstanding, but he tore his Achilles early in 2024, and he wasn’t nearly the same in 2025. His 9.5% pressure rate was 110th out of 184 players who rushed the passer at least 200 times. It’d be foolish to write off a player one year after he came back from injury, but it’d also be foolish to write off the injury altogether.
The fact that Johnson is going into the fifth-year option of his rookie deal and Sweat still has two more years on his rookie deal does hurt Tennessee’s grade a touch.
Saleh has changed the look of his team dramatically in the weeks since taking the job. This trade came one day after Tennessee released starting center Lloyd Cushenberry and starting safety Xavier Woods. The Titans have the most cap space in the NFL (nearly $100 million in effective cap space, per Over The Cap) and the No. 4 pick, which it can still use on a pass rusher or a defensive back or an addition to Cam Ward’s offense. Pairing Simmons with a disruptive edge player is a solid strategy, and if Johnson recaptures his 2023 form, it could be much more than that.
