The New York Jets and Tennessee Titans have officially kicked off the 2026 trade season with a swap that sends defensive end Jermaine Johnson II to Nashville and defensive tackle T'Vondre Sweat to the Big Apple.
The trade appears to be a straight-up swap with no other players or draft capital involved. It reunites Johnson with former head coach Robert Saleh, whom the Titans hired in January, while sending Sweat to his second team ahead of his third season in the league.
The trade gives Johnson the opportunity to potentially revive his career with the same coach he began his career with. After suffering a devastating torn Achilles tendon early in the 2024 season, Johnson managed just three sacks in 14 games in 2025.
Johnson ended his fourth season with 43 tackles, three sacks, 13 pressures, five tackles for loss and two batted passes.
Sweat also dealt with injuries in 2025, which took a hit on his numbers after his promising rookie season. However, the 24-year-old emerged as one of the league's premier defensive tackles when he was on the field. He ended the year with 34 tackles, two sacks, four tackles for loss and one batted pass.
Jets' T'Vondre Sweat-Jermaine Johnson trade grade
The Jets entered the 2026 offseason in desperate need of significant defensive upgrades. What was once one of the most talented defensive rosters in the league took a stark hit at the 2025 deadline when the team sent Sauce Gardner to the Indianapolis Colts and Quinnen Williams to the Dallas Cowboys.
New York has now shipped another promising young player in Jermaine Johnson, but it nets one of the league's most underrated defenders in return.
An ankle injury gave him a slow start to his second season, but T'Vondre Sweat has quickly become one of the best interior run-stopping defensive tackles. While not the best pass-rusher up the middle, Sweat is already one of the premier inside rush defenders in the NFL. His 83.4 player grade on Pro Football Focus was fifth-best among defensive tackles in 2025, while his 79.3 run defense grade ranked fourth.
Adding Sweat addresses one of the Jets' most dire needs in the 2026 offseason. New York allowed the fourth-most rushing yards, the 10th-most yards per carry and the sixth-most rushing touchdowns in 2025.
To gain a young player like Sweat, who is still on his rookie contract, is a big win for the Jets. Losing Johnson might hurt in the long run, but it is also a sign of New York likely targeting an edge defender early in the 2026 NFL Draft, potentially as early as No. 2.
Jets grade: A-
Titans' T'Vondre Sweat-Jermaine Johnson trade grade
In a vacuum, giving up T'Vondre Sweat is a big loss for this Titans defense. Tennessee's elite interior defensive line tandem of Swet and Jeffrey Simmons was one of the few positives the team had during another lost season, and it has now taken that factor away from Saleh.
But what the trade also did was give the Titans an edge-rusher, which they desperately needed in the offseason. Tennessee finished in the top half of the league with 42 sacks in 2025, but only 15 of them came from their current edge-rushers. Only three of them — Jaylen Harrell, Truman Jones and Oluwafemi Oladejo — are currently under contract in 2026.
Adding Johnson to that group is a good start, but he comes with obvious injury risk. However, he enters the 2026 season on the final year of his rookie contract, making it a one-year trial run with the Titans.
Achilles injuries are notoriously difficult for players to recover from in the NFL, particularly those who rely on as much athleticism as Johnson does. But if there is one coach who can dig up the 2023 version of Johnson, it is Saleh, who has already done it once before.
The Titans clearly view adding Johnson at this point in his career as a buy-low opportunity while maintaining their league-leading $97 million cap space. It just came at the high price of Sweat, who looked like a future All-Pro in 2025. If Tennessee wanted to move Sweat to address its edge-rushing need, it feels like it could have yielded a higher return for a player of his caliber.
Titans grade: C+
