You need talent to build a successful unit in the NFL. Talent alone isn’t enough, however. The pieces all need to fit.

I always cringe a bit when I hear a coach this time of year opine that he’s going to play his “best eleven” players.

Really? So if your best eleven players are all linebackers and safeties, that’s how you’re going to run your defense? You’re just going to run a defense with no linemen or cornerbacks? Sounds like a great plan.

Additionally, within position groups themselves, you need players who complement each other the the unit as a whole.

I have to admit I was very surprised during the NFL Draft when the Jets traded John Franklin-Myers to the Denver Broncos.

It isn’t that I thought JFM was untouchable. Earlier in the offseason, I myself had pondered about trading the defense end. My ideas, however, were based on two principles, both the Jets getting a decent return and being able to acquire a replacement who fit his role. In this situation the Jets got neither. Denver sent only a sixth round pick to New York, and it was too late for the Jets to be able to replace JFM.

Now on paper you might say the Jets still have plenty at the defensive end position. They have Jermaine Johnson, coming off a Pro Bowl campaign. They just traded for Haason Reddick, and they have last year’s first round pick Will McDonald.

I know Reddick is holding out, but I’m still expecting him to play and play well. McDonald is a wild card, but we can say for the sake of argument that he has talent.

JFM, however, was a singular player for the Jets, a 290 pounder who could throw up 50 pressures primarily lining up as an edge rusher.

That’s significant because of how Robert Saleh builds his defense. He wants a lot of speed in his back seven. Of the players projected to see significant playing time at the linebacker, cornerback, and safety positions, CJ Mosley is the heaviest, listed on the Jets official website at 231 pounds. Mosley himself is on the small side for a linebacker.

But there’s a logic to it. Again, Saleh wants guys who fly to the football. Smaller guys tend to be faster.

Of course, every tactic has advantages and disadvantages. Smaller guys are easier to block and less adept at shedding blocks.

That’s where a player like JFM became so valuable. Adding extra meat on the defensive line can help compensate for a smaller group at the back of the defense. Most defensive tackles are at least 290 pounds if not bigger. Adding a third 290 pounder to the defensive line helps to wall off the offensive line from the defense’s second level. Bigger guys eat up blockers.

You hear a lot of discussion about whether defensive coaches are “4-3” coaches or “3-4” coaches in today’s NFL. And this discussion is largely pointless. All defenses incorporate elements of classic 4-3 and 3-4 defenses and have adapted them to the challenges of modern passing attacks.

This is a good example. Saleh is known as a 4-3 coach.

But let’s think about the classic 3-4 defense. At its core, it was built around having three defensive linemen who are big and absorb blockers, keeping the offensive line from reaching the back seven. In this sense, JFM had the Jets resembling a 3-4 defense more than a 4-3. The difference is that he didn’t just eat up blocks. He got to the quarterback often after securing the point of attack.

That brings us to training camp 2024. At the time of the JFM trade, many of us speculated that it would open up snaps for Will McDonald.

McDonald, however, entered the league undersized. He is here to rush the passer, but he can’t really provide what JFM brought to the table.

It has drawn some attention that Micheal Clemons seems to be getting reps over McDonald at training camp. I don’t want to read too much into this. It could be a motivational technique for Clemons or McDonald. The coaching staff might want to test these two against specific matchups. There could be another explanation.

Needless to say, it has led to a widescale freak out in some quarters of the fanbase. Clemons is ahead of the first round pick?

What if they actually have different roles despite technically owning the same positional label?

Unlike McDonald and almost any other end on the roster, Clemons could theoretically be a fit for the JFM role at least physically. He isn’t as big as JFM, but at 270 pounds he is sturdier than your typical defensive end.

Additionally, he tended to take the snaps for that role last year when JFM needed a rest. More than 75 percent of Clemons’ snaps came when Franklin-Myers was on the bench. And many of those that came with them on the field together were in short yardage situations when a defense will load the field with its biggest players.

Can Clemons handle the role? That remains to be seen. I would note that a year ago, the Jets run defense was 0.78 yards per carry better with Clemons on the field than with him on the bench.

Now I would warn caution reading too much into that for obvious reasons. We are dealing with a limited snap count, and with 21 other guys on the field on a time the numbers for something like this can get a bit wonky.

Still, this is the essence. You want a defense that can be fast enough to rally to the football but not so small that everybody gets washed out in the run game.

Statistics aside, I think it goes without saying that we would need to see quite a jump in Clemons’ performance before he could perform the role at anything close to the caliber of JFM.

Does the coaching staff believe it will happen? Did that factor into the decision to deal JFM? Is this all a coincidence, and we are bound to forget this speculation by October? We will need to wait to see.