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Star edge-rusher Haason Reddick is holding out as he seeks a new contract this offseason, though the New York Jets reportedly offered him one after acquiring him in a trade with the Philadelphia Eagles.
According to SNY’s Connor Hughes, the Jets “offered Reddick a contract extension” though “the figures, while a raise, were not what Reddick was looking for, so he declined the offer.”
Per that report, Reddick is seeking between $25-28 million per season, but the Jets didn’t want to redo his current deal (he’s owed $14.2 million this season) to reach that figure. They preferred seeing how he performed this year before considering an in-season extension with that sort of heft, according to Hughes.
Reddick, 29, is a pretty nice bargain at his current price point. He’s registered 11 or more sacks in four straight seasons, posting 11 sacks, 38 tackles (13 for loss), 23 quarterback hits and a pass defensed in 2023.
He’s one of the better pure pass-rushers in football off the edge, and the result has been a Pro Bowl berth in each of the past two seasons.
What he doesn’t offer, however, is the all-around impact or rushing upside of the elite edge-rushers in the game like Nick Bosa, T.J. Watt, Myles Garrett or Maxx Crosby.
Bosa is three years younger, is a two-time Defensive Player of the Year and has two seasons with 15 or more sacks. Reddick has one such season and has never been the Defensive Player of the Year.
Watt is the same age, has the same number of years in the NFL and has 96.5 career sacks to 58 for Reddick. He’s also a former DPoY.
Garrett is a year younger (though the same amount of seasons), is a former DPoY and has 88.5 career sacks. He’s also far more impactful against the run.
And Crosby has just six fewer sacks in two fewer seasons.
Given Reddick’s age and some of these comparisons, it’s easy to see why the Eagles—and now potentially the Jets—were hesitant to give him a salary that would put him in line with some of the top rushers in the game.
Reddick, however, can make the fair point that the market has continued to increase for such players, as evidenced by Montez Sweat’s four-year, $98 million deal with the Chicago Bears. Sweat is a good player, no doubt, but he has just one season hitting double-digit sacks in his career.
Granted, sacks aren’t the only metric teams look at, but Reddick can make a strong case that he’s been a more disruptive pass-rusher the past four seasons than Sweat or Rashan Gary (four-year, $96 million extension with the Green Bay Packers; 31.5 career sacks in five seasons).
And Reddick isn’t purely a pass-rushing specialist, even if that’s where he’s made his biggest mark—he played in 74 percent of Philadelphia’s defensive snaps in both 2022 and 2023, higher than both Sweat and Gary in those seasons.
Gary and Sweat, however, are younger players. Chicago and Green Bay had less concerns about how the back end of those deals might play out due to age.
All of this to say that Reddick’s holdout—and New York’s stance on his contract—is a complicated situation. Reddick is arguably underpaid at the moment, but arguably wants to be overpaid in his next deal, if the $25 million-28 million figure is accurate. There’s some precedent for him seeking that figure, given recent deals handed out, but the Jets clearly have their own price point in mind.
